Playing dununs in the old village style–the traditional setup with bells on top of each drum, one drummer each–is great if you have enough skilled players for each of the three drums: dununba, sangban, and kenkeni. But often only one competent drummer is available to play duns, so the solution is to play all three, upright, as shown in the photo on the left.
This upright, tandem setup is called ballet style, since it reflects the change when West African drumming moved from the village to the stages of Conakry, Europe, and beyond. I have just started releasing a new series of free videos on YouTube to show you how to play some of the most popular dance rhythms on the ballet style duns. A few years of experience playing these rhythms at the Little Beach Maui drum jams on Sundays has served as a testing ground to learn and select the best of these patterns for you to use in your own locale… or at Little Beach!
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
— T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
I went to play music with a friend, and when he showed up he said there had been some upset in his family: his young son having a meltdown after a disruption in his routine. I said I could identify. Life seems most comfortable for me (a Cancer, if you follow astrology) when there’s a predictable routine: free of appointments, road trips, random visits, deadlines. I like a lifestyle with creative space, to write, play music, walk, dream.
Of course there is work, too: and though jobs come in random intervals in my freelance editing business, a current job becomes part of the day’s routine. There are smaller routines that pad life’s comfort zone, too: morning meditation and yoga, making coffee the same way, the same daily beach walk, practicing rhythms and melody modes.
Yesterday on a hike my girlfriend slipped on the trail and turned her ankle, causing a nasty sprain. Now she had to miss the first day of work in five years. We slept in, watched the first sunny clear day in a month shine through the stained glass bird wings, and planned a winter trip to Guatemala.
“The faeries must have put a stone under my shoe,” she said.
I dropped off the spare key at her place of work and nearly swerved into a boy on a bike in the wrong lane, at the ferry lineup. There must have been some good faeries around there, too, taking care of the karma of the stone. But that’s another story.
The point is, Life happens. The “good” and the “bad”… It’s always the unexpected, to come knocking on the door (or sometimes knocking down the door if you don’t answer) of that limited box of expectations known as routine. In the jam, I learned the only useful expectation is to expect moments of sheer joy in collective inspired flight, or resonance in the one groove.
Music in its essence is the same as life in general: a collaboration between routine and novelty. Routine or structure (whether rhythmic or melodic/harmonic) forms the foundation of the music, supporting variation and exploration like a springboard. Some variations can be built in, too, adding more complexity to the consistent flow of the music. Then there is improvisation, which dances more freely along with its predictable partner, the structure. Even the wild flights of fancy, though, do best to keep earth in sight, or serve as figures to the ground. Musical life happens around the beat and the melodic core.
At a micro level there is another place that life’s freshness can enter a music that is grounded in structure. And that is through feeling. Music can exist and be played in two dimensions, reflecting its map that represents the timing and notes of the piece. But the map is not the territory. And playing perfectly like a digital robot will not produce living music.
Feeling is what keeps the clave vibrant and alive: regular but not metronomic to the nth degree. Feeling is what turns 4/4 into swing, that indefinable fullness of the body sense in the equation. Feeling is what inspires the heart and soul in Indian music, with its vocal and flute notes bending so artfully. My flute teacher’s Indian master advised him in his practice, above all, to “Make it beautiful.”
I suppose that is the lesson, too, of how to live with the disruption of routine. Tonight I have a band rehearsal. Tomorrow morning at eight my car has an appointment for a wheel alignment. Wednesday is fitness class. So, on it goes… summer has gone. New jobs to take on, more trip planning to do, the next health issue to arise. Visitors to entertain. Good! I remember to breathe, and get ready for the jam.
The next level of introducing the life factor has to do with self-development and self-expression. “Know thyself”— as a musician, that means playing within your limitations. Yet, as an evolving being, exploring the freedom to be who you might be tomorrow or in the next moment, you have a potential expression that only needs permission to put its foot on the stage. Even if sometimes the foot goes in the mouth instead. In this case discernment too comes with practice: know what venue allows what expectations and duties, and what venue offers safety and permission to explore.
Again, in the moment the micro evolution takes place: the impulse and capacity to carry the tempo a little more intensely, and to find a relaxation within that new territory; finding the surprise of a bended note leading the way into a different color scheme altogether. Here we grow: at this edge we meet life headlong, in the moment, and we can choose to play it safe or not; and beyond that place, we can even let go of choice and just let the music (and life) take over for a while.
I just finished reading a fascinating biography called Hendrix: Musician, by Keith Shadwick (Backbeat, 2012), which caught my eye in the discount bin at the local music store. I’ve been delving into Hendrix lore since working on the 1968–70 portion of a memoir, My Generation. Hendrix was god to me then, though I didn’t know enough theory to explain why in musical terms. It was more about the sheer instinctual power and creative reach of the guitar, the generation of a sound never heard before, the universal lyrics and personal voice, and the band as a potent entity, an engine of personal and cultural enlightenment.
Hendrix put in the time learning his craft. Inseparable from his guitar (except when it needed pawning), for years he survived on low pay and anonymity, touring the roadhouse “chitlin circuit” with R&B and soul bands like the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. In New York he played and jammed everywhere he could, until finally he was discovered in a club there by Keith Richard’s girlfriend. The rest was history.
Until reading this biographical fleshing out of the full discography, I never realized how prominently jamming figured in Hendrix’s vision and talent. Of the songs officially released as singles or album tracks, whether studio or live performances, most began as jams. And the majority of the bootlegged material later released could also be counted as little more than jams. In the Winterland concerts of 1968, Hendrix can be heard between every song almost apologetic: “So dig, y’know, we’re just gonna jam on this little thing, I think it’s called, lemme see, bear with us now, y’all so beautiful, out there… oh yeah, it goes somethin like this…”
In the studio, Hendrix’s management team was driven to despair and near insolvency by endless hours of going over material by… more jamming… often with whoever visiting musicians were invited to drop by. After working hours, performing or recording, Hendrix would hit the clubs and sit in during and after sets, jamming on into the night.
Eventually the grind of the touring and recording commitments wore him down. He would have to placate screaming audiences with the same old hits, and attempt to come up with new collections of commercially cohesive songs. Of the 1968 US tour, Bassist Noel Redding recalls, “We stopped making music and started doing time” (188).
Shadwick relates, “Hendrix’s way of dealing with this type of pressure–apart from drugs and casual sex–was to jam after-hours as much as possible. Nearly everyone who became at all close to him, either professionally or personally, was struck by just how much importance Hendrix attached to sitting in with groups or convening an informal jam–anywhere, at any time” (188).
Good jams, bad jams… it seems even the great Hendrix had his share of both. For the famous Woodstock concert, Hendrix brought on two freelance conga players and percussionists, Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan. Neither kit drummer Mitch Mitchell nor biographer Keith Shadwick were impressed with the results of the ever more undisciplined jams, in rehearsal for “the crowning set at the world’s most overpopulated rock festival” (256). Nor did the Woodstock set show much improvement, in Shadwick’s view.
“With the extra percussionists [Hendrix] was trying to bring a heavier emphasis to the crosscurrents of rhythm… a more ethnic or roots-based foundation for the counter-rhythms and patterns.” Unfortunately, the outcome was less than satisfying. Shadwick explains:
Hendrix verbalised nothing. No one was told when to play and when not to play, with the inevitable result that plenty of inappropriate playing took place. This is especially noticeable in the case of the two percussionists. It is an old saw among musicians that percussionists without a precise brief will play through anything, regardless of how appropriate or inappropriate their contribution may be. They always think a few extra rhythms will help. The opposite is true. A constant thunder of uncoordinated percussion will dissipate the music’s impact and prevent it from breathing properly, making it seem to drag along with heavy baggage rather than propelling the sound. (258)
Shadwick goes on to note that much of the conga/percussion sound was buried in the Woodstock recording mix, so perhaps I never noticed the flaws, when I lapped up the Woodstock soundtrack album at the age of nineteen.
Jammin with Mamady at Rhythm Traders
Lately, though, I’ve been realizing the need to learn this same lesson in my conga and percussion playing for two improv bands, Aquarius Victoria and Dream Catcher. As an “ethnic” drummer for traditional West African dance, accompaniment parts are played steady throughout a piece (except in the case of unison break arrangements for performance). Even as a lead drummer I will mark the dance moves by switching between predetermined “traditional solos” as taught by masters such as Famoudou Konate and Mamady Keita. As a soloist there is opportunity to mark the dance more creatively, too—whether fast and busy, or sparse and spacious.
In an electric band mix, the congas/percussion play a different role. There the kit drum and bass can cover the main responsibility for holding the rhythm foundation; so I have come slowly to find out I don’t need to carry that role into this type of music. Laying back then opens the door to more listening, so I can respond and play off what the drummer and bassist are doing. It then becomes a potent triangle of rhythmic conversation that provides a strong yet dynamic foundation for the other instruments.
It’s also a matter of style. Some percussionists excel at holding the tempo, supporting; others bring a more exotic, abstract spice to the mix. And it depends on what the musical style demands and invites.
At a recent birthday jam I introduced the concept of jamming by the simple rule, “keeping the beat.”
Chris, a longtime musical companion and improviser, corrected me. “Or, there’s only one rule: there are no rules.”
Roots Super Jam: Collected West African & Diaspora Drum Rhythms
Roots Jam * Volumes 1, 2 & 3
All three volumes of Roots Jam West African and Afro-Latin drumming lessons and notation are now available to you in one book. Learn djembe rhythms, dunun patterns, and other hand drum and percussion parts, along with tips to improve your technique and feel. Use Roots Super Jam for solo practice, dance class arrangements, drum circles or ensemble performance.
Special introductory offer: Save nearly 50% for all three Roots Jam books when you order Roots Super Jam.
Recently I have been emailing a school student working on a music project, answering questions about West African rhythms. His latest query asked for exercises or tips for mastering polyrhythms.
Polyrhythms, in a nutshell, are combinations of rhythms using different time signatures, played together.
Here are some prototypical polyrhythms:
With any 4/4 pattern…the Afro-Latin clave:
x – – x – – x – x – – x – – x –
Note the predominant triplet feel in the swing of the clave, played over a 4/4 bar.
With any 6/8 pattern, you can overlay a binary cross-rhythm. The following is a common kenkeni part for 6/8 rhythms like Soli…
x – o – o – x – o – o –
or Dununba:
O – x – O – x – O – x –
My latest deep exploration, inspired by the Drum in the Sun camp in Thailand run by Michael Pluznick and Tim Dabrowski, plays with the elasticity of a single djembe pattern, in the field between the artificial polarities of 4/4 and 6/8. For example, try each of these as 6, then as 4, then back and forth, with more subtlety, in the middle:
[right, left: G, D = bass; g, d = tone; P, T = slap]
Sunu
as 6: g T P D P d g T P D P d
as 4: g – T P – D P d g – T P – D P d
Djole
as 6: G d g D P T G d g D P T
as 4: G – d g D – P T G – d g D – P T
4/4 bell: x – x – x – x – x – x – x – x –
One further note on polyrhythmic timing. There are two ways to overlap 6 on 4. For example in Djole (which is normally played in 4) instead of leaving spaces as in the 4 variation above, you can instead stretch the triplet notes of the 6 variation evenly across the phrase, so for example the G d g will take the same time as the x – x – of the bell pulse.
As always, mastering these overlapping timings in ensemble can be tricky. Try it with a drum track for practice, and explore the elastic space available with your solo practice.
Last week I had the pleasure of witnessing up close some ceremonial drumming in front of the Temple of the (Buddha’s) Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Packing my sangban along on this trip for a February drum camp in Thailand, I was eager to see some of the local dundunfolas in action.Not that the rhythms were by any stretch West African… Yet these were master drummers in their own right, making rich tapestries with hands on the double-headed Indian-style drums, accompanied by clattery riffs of curved stick on double tablas.
As if this were not treat enough, I attended a performance of a local traditional drum and dance troupe, featuring the same kinds of drums in a more extensive showcase of brilliant solos and polyrhythms. At times the rhythms were crazy, complex, elusive; then, marked by the metronome of zills, an identifiable 4/4 or 6/8 pattern would come into play. Freely improvising on an internal groove, the soloist would ride a juicy wave quite reminiscent in feel and flavor to a djembefola: with hands working both sides of the horizontal bass drum. Enjoy!
After a long hiatus, I have recorded and uploaded 2 new free drum lessons to my popular YouTube channel – the Djembe Lessons Playlist. In these video lessons I present the basic techniques and patterns needed to play a selection of common patterns for dununs, particularly kenkeni and sangban, in the traditional style with mounted bells.
Dunun Basic Video 1: How to Play Dununs: Basic Technique and Patterns. For a beginner I break down the elementary bell patterns and how they fit with the stick beats, and demonstrate the open and mute notes with the stick hand. You can see the various combinations of single and double bell and stick beats in action with seven sample tradtional rhythm parts.
Dunun Basic Video 2: Kenkeni Part for Dununba. A second lesson presents a basic and advanced version of the challenging kenkeni part for the Dununba family of rhythms, beginning with an onbeat “training wheels” version and moving on to the traditional offbeat feel.
Below you will find notation for the seven traditional rhythm samples in the basic beginner’s lesson:
Notation Key: x = bell without stick played o = open hit with stick (and bell) m = mute (closed) hit with stick (and bell)
Makru: o – x – o – x –
Yanvalou (Haitian): o – x – m –
6/8 ride: x – x x – x x – x x – x
Mendiani: o – x x – x o – x x – x
Bolokonondo: m – x m – x m – x m – x
Sorsornet: x – o x – o x – o x – o
Kassa: x – o o – x m –
Two new publications are available for beginning or experienced drummers to learn from. These resources offer accessible rhythms and experiential lessons that helped me in the early phase of my journey as a hand drummer.
Friday Night Jamis a kind of anecdotal, instructional how-to (and sometimes painful how-not-to) guide to group improvisation, based on my firsthand learning experiences in a weekly open jam in rural British Columbia, in the early 1990s. African drumming was booming in popularity then but not well integrated into conventional Western music mixes. This chronicle conveys the challenge of merging diverse musical instruments, genres and personalities; of attempting to produce quality music in a venue that welcomes relative beginners, lifelong amateurs, and random drop-ins for the night. The elusive magic of group improvisation, so sensitive to the interplay of diverse factors, proves emblematic of all human relations.
This 57-page ebook offers an experiential overview of the confluence and conflict of different musical styles and expectations: acoustic/electric, world beat/rock, drummers/guitarists, perfectionists/amateurs, safe/risk, stoned/straight, standards/improvisation, men/women, fifties/sixties, tight/free. At the core of the journey is the learning of the limited individual ego, with its unique talents and limitations, to negotiate the free and structured spaces with others, to merge in the greater group striving for excellence and beyond, ecstatic union. In rendering this spirit and process, the words too can speak for themselves, players in the mix, jamming on the universal pulse.
Get Friday Night Jam from the Amazon Kindle store.
Roots Jam, the series of three popular rhythm studies for African drummers, is now available in print from Amazon.
Roots Jam is a unique resource which contains hundreds of rhythms from the African, Latin and rock traditions, along with inspired improvisations. Easy notation, useful for all levels, from beginners to performers. Includes lesson guides, arrangements, popular styles, practice exercises, and a list of other resources. Fully indexed.
“Roots Jam is a compilation of hand drum rhythms that is well presented, with an easy-to-understand-and-use notation that appears to be gaining some acceptance as a standard for hand-drum rhythm notation. This foundation has allowed me, a beginner, to use Roots Jam as one of my primary instructional books. I highly recommend this book to any one who hand drums.” –A.E. Rice, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Now available, all three Roots Jam books! Order now from Amazon:
How to Play Ballet Style Dununs
Roots Super Jam:
