[3] Diabaté was born in 1931 into a family of well-known musicians, and learned to play guitar and saxophone as well as the balafon.
In the late 1950s, he helped form the Orchestre de la Garde Républicaine (Première Formation), which toured West Africa.
[3] He then joined Les Ambassadeurs, the band led after 1972 by singer Salif Keita.
[4] He developed his style of playing after performing in concert with American jazz musicians, including vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and singer Ella Fitzgerald, while on a tour of the US in 1978 sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation,[3] and thereafter often used two balafons together, offset by a semitone.
[3] From 1993, he performed with the Symmetric Orchestra, led by the unrelated kora player Toumani Diabaté.