Djembe Rhythms from West Africa

Category: drum jams

  • Sunu Jams, and other exercises for handing and timing

    Sunu Jams, and other exercises for handing and timing

    Do you know the feeling of a rhythm that knows you so well it always shows itself when you sit down to play? So you can’t shake it, as if it doesn’t want to let you go. You might call it your song. At least until the next one comes along.

    Lately (like, the last ten years) I’ve been obsessed with a kind of Sunu groove, which I feel is the core of Sunu, the opening g – P T in 4/4, and so many variations thereof. Also what attracts me to the Sunu feel is its flexiblity to become triplets, or 6/8 meter, interchangeably with the 4/4, simply by an adjustment of timing between the notes, sometimes obvious and abrupt, sometimes nuanced, imperceptible.

    So often what starts out as a straight Sunu soon morphs into a Lafe, or Aconcon, with a doubled tone to start. Or, what starts that way veers into Sunu before long, then into triplets and back again. (See the YouTube video I recorded from such a jam, with some patterns as indicated below).

    Here are some of the patterns that turn up in such a solo practice jam, with many more variations just by mixing and matching the half bar patterns. Note that a switch of handing sometimes makes sense when lining up with triplets.

    Note that in many of the above patterns, the key is to keep alternating right and left handing through the sequence of notes. That way the timing can be squeezed or stretched wherever you like, for additional variations whether sticking with 4/4, or giving a triplet twist.

    Happy drumming!
    —Nowick Gray

    YouTube video: Lafe/Sunu practice jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXJbDQl187c

    For more exercises and studies in djemberhythms, see the Roots Jam books available at DjembeRhythms.com (PDF and audio) or Amazon (PDF or print).

  • Candomble and the Parade of Lost Souls

    Candomble and the Parade of Lost Souls

    This past Halloween, the samba band I play with, Samba du Soleil, got to take part in the annual Parade of Lost Souls event in Vancouver. We were stationed at the entrance gate to open the festivities, playing for half an hour before the city’s own Carnival Band came marching up with horns blaring and drums pounding, to lead the crowd off into the night.

    Our band had a captive audience to begin, though it was still daylight and they hung back, only a few of the usual brave souls dancing to break the ice. Our usual opening number, Baion, was lively enough, but the next tune, a more mellow Bollywood jam, was less practiced and failed to energize. So we switched it back up to our rocking Samba Reggae, to get everyone up and moving as the Carnival Band arrived.

    First they played over top of our tune, then gave signals to follow their musical lead. It was all pretty chaotic and loud and fun as it should be, with the costumed crowd fully engaged now and ready to amble out of the square on the Carnival Band’s coattails. Samba du Soleil held our positions beside the exit passage where the crowd column, five or six wide, continued streaming past.

    In the transition as the other band faded from the scene, our band kept the pulse going with a steady trance pulse. The surdo and percussion were supporting the groove as I improvised a funky two-bar walking beat on the timbau:

    My choice of beats wasn’t premeditated or decided consciously, it just arose out of the energetic of the moment, the pace of the crowd walking past, the bounce of the vibe. Once locked in, I had to keep it going, until finally the flow of people dwindled after twenty minutes.

    Needless to say, that rhythm stayed with me for the next two days and nights, hammered into my bones and humming in my cells. Then on the third day, when thinking about the band’s work in progress, Candomble, it hit me: that was the essential feel I was channeling in Vancouver. A closer look at the notation confirmed the unconscious link to the rhythm I was working on the week before.

    I had thought I found a new mine shaft to the mother lode of ritual music, but it proved to be an avenue well traveled before, even a familiar one, only obscured by other itineraries, agendas, and maps of the mountain.

    —

    For more rhythms to play with a samba or batucada band, be sure to see my latest books in the Roots Jam series, Roots Jam 4: World Beats – Rhythms Wild! and Best of Roots Jam: African & World Drum Rhythms (available from Amazon in print, or the DjembeRhythms.com order page for PDF versions and optional audio files).

  • How to Get Into a Jam

    How to Get Into a Jam

    The following excerpt from Flutes Jam: A Guide to Improvisation addresses issues that apply to group music in any context, whether playing a drum or flute or other instrument. It could apply as well to the daily performance (or jam) we call life.

    How to Get into a Jam: Four Stages of Personal Evolution

    1. Unconscious self-absorption

    Not listening, not paying attention to others or the wider music. Maybe focused on the instrument, the melody, the rhythm, but in solo bubble: inspired by some private muse, but unaware. Or simply daydreaming, fantasizing, worrying, thinking… buffered from the living organism of the jam.

    1. Hyperconscious self-absorption

    “When you’re nervous it’s because you think everyone’s looking at you and the first thing to realize is they’re not. It’s just a big ego trip. Plus, when you’re feeling like that, all the energy is coming in toward you. You’re making it happen that way. The thing to do is turn it around and send the energy out. To be giving energy to what’s happening. Like Olatunji says, Service.” —Friday Night Jam

    1. Global awareness, energy of all, witness, transparent eyeball

    Present in the space: listening. Harmonizing, gelling in time, joining the flow. Holding steady, with wide-lens focus, soft gaze. Attention to breath, posture, pace, dynamic. Blending in. Ready to shift, when the moment is ripe.

    1. Spiritual warrior, intuitive jazz, heart-centered

    Effortless mastery, without thought. Flying above, or rooting below. One with the organism, the living machine; breathing and dancing together. “Right action, without attachment to the fruits of action.”

    We don’t always achieve or embody mastery but we can always be mindful, or remind ourselves, that there is more to be gained by deepening and opening our awareness. For more insights into the art of improvisation, with practical tips and visual learning aids for solo practice and group creation, see the newly released Flutes Jam: A Guide to Improvisation. 

    “An intricate and in-depth presentation of a world of musical styles and genres. The book’s approach to the learning process opens the doors to infinite possibilities of improvisation—the intuitive aspect of music playing, too often overlooked in academia.” —E. Nep

  • Samba du Soleil

    Samba du Soleil

    Samba du Soleil, based on Salt Spring Island, BC, has been playing Brazilian batucada music–arranged by Sam Miller and inspired from Brazilian master Celso Machado–for almost twenty years now. Personnel changes and musical variations continue, but the band plays on with ever zestful flavors of Carnival.

    The Samba du Soleil set list is featured in the latest Roots Jam 4: World Beats compilation.

    Watch video footage from our latest event, a fundraiser for the Amazon: 

     

     

     

     

    Hear audio samples from a recent rehearsal (sorry garage-quality audio!)

    And finally, some photos from gigs over the past year (2019):

    Visit the Samba du Soleil Facebook group for more photos and videos.

    Access the full Samba du Soleil Set List:

    –chapter in Roots Jam 4: World Beats – Rhythms Wild!

    –conventional music notation (partial set) at Musescore

  • Musical Sound Awareness

    Musical Sound Awareness

    (an excerpt from a forthcoming memoir by Nowick Gray, My Generation)

    In the winter term (1971) I explored an intriguing new avenue of expression, one also well suited to the temper of the time. Musical Sound Awareness was taught by a black jazz musician, Robert Northern, who on the first day said to the class, “Call me Ah.” He wore a blousy yet masculine, black-and-orange checked dashiki and pointed black shoes, and dark purple fez. His manner was casual, yet charged with inspiration; he possessed and modeled an easy grace of motion and speech.

    Sixty non-musicians like me sat in bleacher-style seats and clapped, grunted, tapped, whistled, banged, drummed, hooted and beat on whatever instrument came to hand—conga or harmonica, African thumb piano, shaker, bell or sticks. The key was rhythm—making up one part and matching them together, sixty sound tracks melded into one cohesive whole.

    For inspiration and understanding of the underlying concept of musical appreciation, Ah gave us a simple homework assignment the first week: to listen to the sounds of nature. I heard the calls of crows, and the tock-tocking of woodpeckers, merging with the adagio of trees in the wind, in mystical orchestration.

    And what about the swishing of traffic, the distant voices of students calling across the Green? I decided they could all be part of the mix, too. Twenty years later I would take up African drumming, and host a 24-hour jam where the only rule was “Keep the beat.” Exiting the Argenta community hall in the morning, I recalled this earlier moment of musical sound awareness, as the crows carried on the beat when the drums fell silent.

    Back in class, I tried my hand at the conga drums, wanting to channel Santana, or perhaps my future drumming self. But it was a lame first attempt, and the spot audition certified a couple of black guys with more experience and talent. I settled for the miscellaneous percussion.

    “Just jam with it,” Ah said. “You got to hear where to fit your sound in. The parts all fit to the central pulse, see, which is the silence, the breath, the heartbeat, the wind. You hear me? Yeah. Okay, hit it.”

    Chang, chang, chang, chock-chock…

    It actually worked; we made music.

    Ah’s friend Dizzy Gillespie flew up one day to wow us with his wit and wild trumpet. I had never followed the jazz scene much, despite my boyhood fascination for trumpet legend Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. But that once-nursed glimmer of a dream to play jazz trumpet now stood embodied in the brown man with his signature ballooning cheeks blowing notes like the very voice of freedom itself.

    I found it at once exciting and humbling to recognize how wide the gap was from childish dreams to celebrity performer. Yet that gap dwindled in this intimate human connection, in the informal class setting.

    Ah announced that for the course finale, the class would perform in the college auditorium for a public audience. I proposed to recite an original poem, “Starshine,” to be accompanied by sequential improvisations of various instruments. Each stanza celebrated one of the planets with its own characteristic mythical imagery and orchestral coloring.

    “Hey, that’s far out,” Ah said to me. “You know what you do for this? You go to the theatre department, they got a wardrobe room upstairs, and you ask them for a magician’s robe—and one of those tall, pointed hats, with stars on it. Oh yeah,” he said, clapping his hands together, smiling, and rolling his eyes momentarily to the ceiling, “I can see it now.”

    I did as he instructed and, come performance day, found myself floating around on stage in my black, star-studded robes, gesticulating to the heavens and exhorting my haywire orchestra to accompany the otherwise forgettable verses I intoned into the microphone.

    Ah sprung a last-minute surprise by bringing up some real jazz musicians from New York City to back us up. Their delicate tinklings and swirling whistles elevated the performance of “Starshine” from noise to art, helping all of us to earn a gratifying round of applause.

    I discovered in Ah’s course that anyone can play, even perform. The supposed boundaries between art and nature, music and sound, even professional and amateur, had been blurred, even erased. And the difference in self-concept between inept and accomplished could be bridged simply by donning the proper costume and attitude, and by getting up there and doing it.

    I didn’t yet know my inspiration was sparked then to learn the craft of music, decades down the road. I wanted most of all to be able to jam, playing hand drums. But to do it well would require learning the rudiments and practicing technique. Opportunity and dedication aside, there was no denying the special talent some possessed to produce music of surpassing genius; and in that respect, no one could touch Hendrix. I sang his praises in every discussion comparing rock stars, and always played his records when I felt the highest, or lowest.

     

    Further reading: 50 years after: Woodstock on the Beach

    Free ebook: Friday Night Jam

    Order now:

    Kindle eBook – Now FREE at: Amazon.com  | Amazon.ca
    Paperback: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca

  • Music = Routine + Life

    Music = Routine + Life

    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.

    Enjoy the ride. You can help make it beautiful.

     

  • Hendrix and Jamming

    Hendrix and Jamming

    It’s a way of life.
    —Frank Zappa

    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.”

    —

    The free memoir Friday Night Jam chronicles my early attempts to fuse African percussion with electric blues and rock jams. Currently I’m at work on a three-decade memoir of the baby boom, My Generation. Visit my website NowickGray.com, connect on Facebook and Twitter, or sign up for my newsletter.

  • Drum Jamming Made Easy (Sometimes)

    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 Jam is 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.
    Read an excerpt from Friday Night Jam.

    Roots Super Jam
    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:
    Roots Jam: Collected Rhythms for Hand Drum and Percussion
    Roots Jam 2: West African and Afro-Latin Drum Rhythms
    Roots Jam 3: Arrangements for West African Drum and Dance
    Roots Super Jam (RJ vols. 1-3): Collected West African & Diaspora Drum Rhythms

    Also see my free djembe lessons for beginners on YouTube!