Xilam Balam is a St. Paul visual artist, lyricist, and producer. He works with a broad spectrum of mediums from airbrush to stone jewelry, clay, mosaic, & hip-hop. His current projects include an album featuring the sounds of the contemporary Mesoamerican clay flutes he creates. Balam was the lead apprentice under Armando Gutiérrez G., in 2014 on the MN Flute Project, to revitalize the folk art and music of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican indigenous clay instruments. Born in San Antonio, Tejas, Balam’s Xicano identity is at the center of all his art forms. He has spent the last 20 years studying Mayan and Mexican glyphs and he creates individually stylized epigraphy drawings.
Xilam Balam Ybara
