I first heard of Manu Dibango when AM radio was playing his hit "Soul Makossa" around 1974, and I knew of him as an Afrobeat singer and sax player. I had no idea he played mallets until I saw a video concert around 1999 on the BET on Jazz channel. I discovered this on YouTube yesterday of this great Afrobeat arrangement of a song we all know (I won't let the cat out of the bag), and notice how the arrangement is built around the marimba.

＊Ballads - Energy and Motion
Translation for Chinese students
中文翻譯:

聊聊Ballads （慢速的樂曲），
常常我們在聆聽一個樂團演奏Ballads時，
會覺得速度好慢，似乎有些無聊，
Tony認為那是因為演奏者的演奏意圖、方向感、氛圍不夠明確，
所以這一集我們來嘗試一些練習，
看可以怎麼將慢速的曲子處理得漂亮。

首先，先找一個音，演奏Ballads的速度，
把速度和節奏感表現出來。
從Tony的示範中，
我們可以很清楚的聽到速度是什麼 ;
接著在一個和弦上來即興，並專注在同樣的事情上：保持速度感（Tony示範：GMajor7)。
如果你從來沒有演奏過Ballads，這是一個很棒的練習。

Tony示範了一首Ballad - I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face
他說，有些時候他在練習時，
只練習和弦的進行，把速度感保持好、感受和弦變化的時候的色彩張力，會幫助很大喔！

Is it her face or your face? Politically correct I guess is her.

Did I post this already?

He said play an Ab dominant bebop scale over a Cmin7b5. It's interesting because a C-7b5 looks like a rootless Ab9 chord.

So I thought I'd pass it along here. I'm sure he has covered it in lessons, but I thought I would mention it.

Adapting 3+3+2 to the Balafon

Sometimes we need to step away from our primary instrument to rebuild our awareness from the ground up. I incorporate my Harmonic Time method for all the material I have learned and teach. Here is a general description of the method:

One of my favorite songs - "Young and Foolish". My student and I were working on this for solo vibraphone playing and voicings. Here's a little sample of what we were working on. Fun stuff.

I've been working on solo vibraphone most lately and I had to record this for a competition, so I thought I would post it! Criticism?

While spending way too much time on YouTube this past month, I discovered this tremendous player by accident. Seriously, anyone looking for an entire evening's variety of great bankable material need look no further; if you look through his many online videos, you'll find a lot of variety between actual jazz compositions and standard tunes. This video is of Monk's tune "I Mean You."