Djembe Rhythms from West Africa

Category: rhythm notation

  • 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).

  • Latin Meets African

    Latin Meets African

    At a weekly market in San Pancho, Mexico (a small town up the coast from Puerto Vallarta), a musical trio called Caravan provided the live entertainment for the day. A talented flamenco-style guitarist, a versatile female singer, and a conga player. The drummer had an improvised kit of sorts, as he sat on a cajon, with one foot operating a cowbell pedal, and the other a pedal for cymbal. But for the most part he stuck to a simple tumbao pattern on the single conga:

    H t g d H t P t

    I have long known of this rhythm as a staple of the Afro-Latin genre, but never noticed it being relied on for virtually a whole set of diverse popular, classical, and Latin-style songs.

    The repetitive nature of this particular rhythm reminded me of another concert I witnessed in Victoria, BC about twenty years ago. Juno Award-winner Alpha Yaya Diallo (on guitar and vocals) fronted a band featuring a talented djembe player, likely also from Guinea, who occasionally was set loose to show his chops. But for 90 percent of the show, I was amazed to see him confined to the same simple accompaniment rhythm, which any beginning djembe player will recognize as the basic part for Kuku:

    G – g d – – P –

    I was struck by the similarly confined role of both of these talented drummers separated by time, geography and culture, given the emphasis of the music they were supporting. And now for the first time I realized the universality of the rhythm they both played, as the tumbao and the Kuku part are essentially the same archetypal rhythm.

    Both start grounded with the bass downbeat on the 1, follow with a double tone upbeat, an understated downbeat on the 2, and a final upbeat slap.

     

    It’s a proven formula, suitable for virtually any 4/4 song, to provide both a stable downbeat structure and an uplifting offbeat counterpoint. The unstressed extra notes on conga (unbolded, below) serve only as timekeepers.

    To explore further the many overlaps between traditional African and Afro-Latin rhythms, choose from any books in the Roots Jam series. And let me know what other lookalikes you discover! 

  • 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).

  • Best of Roots Jam

    Best of Roots Jam

    With four volumes of Roots Jam already covering the map of world beats from the African tradition and beyond, it’s time for a “Best of” album… er, book!

    No more thumbing through separate indexes, choosing from too many variations, or deciding which book fits your focus. Now you can have it all, distilled into one handy reference for study and practice, or playing on the fly. 

    Best of Roots Jam brings you 101 jam-packed pages of rhythms from West Africa and around the world, with tips, comparative charts and cheat sheets for beginning, intermediate and advanced drummers. Notation for djembe and dunun (traditional and ballet-style) as well as tabla, doumbek, conga and Latin percussion.

    Best of Roots Jam: African and World Rhythms – order now in paperback or PDF download. 

    This curated collection includes the most popular rhythms from the other Roots Jam books, with upgraded formatting in consistent, easy-to-read grid notation. The perfect companion for solo practice, dance class, group ensemble performance, or funky DJ tracks. 

    Order now from Amazon (paperback or Kindle PDF) or from this website (PDF only, with optional audio bundle). 

  • How We Practice

    How We Practice

    Last spring, after a couple of years off from playing West African music, the local dance teacher reached out to see if we could start some regular practice on traditional dundun rhythms.

    Yes!

    So we began, with a few others trying out until we settled on a core study group of four to six players. The dance teacher has learned some of the rhythms before and knows what she likes from dance classes; otherwise it mainly falls to me to share parts from my store of resources and experience.

    As with drum students everywhere, the written notation works for some and not for others. I bring notes to rely on and support my porous memory, so at least I can model all the parts accurately for others to learn. For those students who relate to it, the notation serves both to follow along closely when learning beat by beat, and to reference visually the single or multiple bars of a pattern.

    We usually have three separate dunun players (traditional style with bells), and once they get rolling, I practice djembe parts, traditional solos, breaks, and improvisation. With the following notation you can share what we’ve been grooving with. All the rhythms have traditional sources, but at this stage they are mixed and mingled, adapted to our circumstance and taste.

    Pro Tip: Lately there’s so much good stuff to choose from (beyond the projects of Bolokondo and Dunungbe), so for the next rhythm to practice, we pick from a hat.

    For written notation and audio tracks for your solo and group practice, see the Roots Jam collection (4 volumes to choose from) at Amazon.com or the DjembeRhythms.com order page.

  • Reunion and the Hindu Scale

    Reunion and the Hindu Scale

    The following exploration is an excerpt from Flutes Jam: A Guide to Improvisation. In this section I compare the rhythmic pattern for the Brazilian rhythm Reunion, with the intervals for the Hindu scale I’ve been enjoying on flute. 

    At the last samba practice, the band leader called for the “Six Eight” rhythm. Lately we’ve been learning an arrangement called Bankoma 6/8 (Haffner/DeMiranda, Blocos Afro). The woodblocks are complemented in our arrangement by a bell playing just the low notes: L – L – L L – L – L – L —the well-known short bell pattern, which also indicates the intervals of the major diatonic scale.

    Bankoma 6/8

     

    1

    .

    .

    2

    .

    .

    3

    .

    .

    4

    .

    .

    surdo 1

    o

     

     

    O

     

     

    o

     

     

    O

     

     

    surdo 2

    o

    o

    o

     

    o

    o

    o

     

    O

    O

    O

    O

    > 

    O

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    O

    O

     

    O

    woodblock

    L

    H

    L

    H

    L

    L

    H

    L

    H

    L

    H

    L

    timbau

    g

     

    P

    T

    g

    d

    g

     

    T

    P

    D

    G

    caixa

    X

    x

    X

    x

    Xx

    X

    x

    X

    x

    X

    x

    x

    Unfortunately, we used to call another rhythm, Reunion, “six eight,” even though more properly it’s a 3/4 rhythm. That bell part is slightly different from the short bell, and yields (like the Mendiani sangban pattern of Famoudou Konate below) the Hindu Scale (a.k.a. Major-Minor).

    Short Bell

    Major Scale

    L

     

    L

     

    L

    L

     

    L

     

    L

     

    L

    Reunion 3/4

    Hindu Scale

    L

     

    H

     

    L

    H

     

    H

    L

     

    H

     

    Mendiani sangban

    Hindu Scale

    O

     

    O

     

    x

    M

     

    x

    M

     

    O

     

    Mendiani sangban 2

    Minor Locrian

    O

     

    O

    x

     

    M

    x

     

    O

     

    O

     

    Note the sangban variation (2) above has the same pattern but shifted over. Both Mendiani variations correspond to the Melodic Minor scale (root note in bold). In the latter case the resulting scale when starting at the far left, with the drum pattern, is the Minor Locrian, or Half-Diminished.

    The above digression aside, in practice I heard “Six Eight” and mistakenly reverted to Reunion, instructing the novice bell player to play the 3/4 part. Needless to say, it didn’t mesh well, and finally I realized my mistake. Later I considered what it would be like to play the short bell with H(igh) and L(ow) notes like Reunion:

     Reunion

    L

     

    H

     

    L

    H

     

    H

    L

     

    H

     

    Short Bell

    L

     

    H

     

    L

    H

     

    H

    >> 

    L

     

    H

    Here we can see more clearly that the two rhythms are actually not that far off, essentially with just one space inserted in the short bell to shift the last two notes forward. In fact it makes an interesting two-bar pattern to play them consecutively!

    Turning then to my flute practice, I found myself, coincidentally enough, improvising on one of my favorite recurring scales… the Hindu. In this case I kept inserting an eighth note in the scale, yielding a kind of Bebop scale. If we resolve that scale to the Melodic Minor’s root (bold, again), we can call it Bahar when the eighth note is added. I start there simply because, to my ear, that scale with eight notes resolves best there.

    Reunion

    L

     

    H

     

    L

    H

     

    H

    L

     

    H

     

    Hindu > Bahar

    O

     

    O

    (o)

    O

    O

     

    O

    O

     

    O

     

    Likewise, when adding the eighth note to the major scale following the short bell pattern, we get the Bebop Dominant if resolving again on the one.

    Short Bell

    x

     

    x

     

    x

    x

     

    x

     

    x

     

    x

    Bebop Dominant

    O

     

    O

     

    O

    O

     

    O

     

    O

    (o)

    O

    … modes

    1

     

    2

     

    3

    4

     

    5

     

     

     

    8

    Resolving on some other modes yields more interesting results:

    2: Raga Mukari; 3: Phrygian/Locrian Mixed; 4: Ichikotsucho; 5: Bebop Dorian; 8: Prokofiev

    The comparison of rhythms with melodic scales is addressed more fully in Roots Jam 4: World Beats, the chapter called Archetypal Music (reproduced also in the new release, Flutes Jam). You can order Flutes Jam from Amazon or download the PDF here.

    Bonus offer: get Flutes Jam plus Roots Jam 2 & 4, and Friday Night Jam, in one download bundle for just $11.99 (save $5). Order here.

     

  • Drumming and Protest

    Drumming and Protest

    As a fledgling drummer and burning out environmental activist back in the ‘90s, I was happy to support the watershed logging protest camp at Hasty Creek with some conga beats by the campfire. Everyone has a role. Politics gets tiresomely verbal, and dangerously serious; yet those who stand must speak… so what better medium than the ancient drum?

    It runs into politics too. Like the time an elderly British lady watching cricket on the field across where we were practicing for dance class with duns, bells and djembes, came up to complain, “It’s very distracting, you know!” Yes ma’am, that’s the point. It’s not a soothing, but an activating instrument, disturbing the peace with purpose.

    And then there’s the cultural appropriation arrow. It needn’t be argued here; it goes as deep as one wants to go. At bottom, it’s about sound and frequency, vibration and magic, that comes from beyond and inside of us and means to enliven our common humanity on this earth. In that simplicity is so much power. Power that is set aside, like elemental fire, in the canon of things legal and appropriate in our civilized decorum. So the power joins parades to demonstrate our allied needs, singing back to natural harmony, unity, beauty.

    This week there’s talk of coming out of hibernation with the local island samba band, Samba du Soleil, to join a BLM march. Hooray! We’ve been stewing all winter waiting to gather and practice again, every week as we normally do, but only just begun with two sessions. With the lockdowns we wondered if there would be any protests or marches this summer to join and animate… perhaps even a protest of the lockdown itself? Probably not, as band members were split, feelings divided. But we all wanted to play together again—if only to bask in its glow in our group bubble, outside in the sunshine.

    As for the rusty rhythms, most are picking up pretty well where we left off, those many hours of muscle memory close at hand. Even our newest piece, just introduced in the fall, Candombe.

    Here are the two parts I was given to play on timbau by our band leader, Sam Miller. Shaped somewhat cone-like, it’s basically a synthetic ashiko; so I play it like a djembe and the usual notation applies:

    1. G – – T P – d – G – – T P d g(d)

    No, that’s not a misprint with that first tone (d). It just helps to loosen things up if a pattern permits, to play with the opposite hand from usual when alternating. So instead of three hits in a row with the right (P – g – G -), why not play a left-hand beat (d) instead?

    The last (d) of the bar is optional. You might want to try a two-bar pattern with that beat as a rest, the first time around, and throw the extra beat in on bar two for the quick turnaround.

    1. P – – T G – P d g – P d G T – d

    This part starts the same as the first part, but switches the [bass… slap] opening to a [slap… bass.] There’s a lot going on after that, so alternate hands and focus, starting slow.  It’s pretty funky when it gets rolling.

    I hadn’t played Candombe since back in those early days of the ‘90s. It was the main rhythm I learned in my first full drum workshop, with Joseph “Pepe” Danza from Uruguay, in Nelson, BC. Trying to invent a notation on the fly, I tinkered with it to where I thought that’s what Pepe taught; but later he supplied his own notation. Naturally, they were fairly different, if in the same feel. But then as Pepe says, “There are many parts to Candombe. It’s incredibly rich and complex.” Candombe, after all, is itself “a transformation of rhythms that come from Nigeria and/or Congo.” (See more notation and discussion in my post, “Uruguayan Trance Rhythm.”)

    Give it up to the drum. And as with the drum… Take it with respect, and run with it, powered by the heart.

    ————-

    For more samba and batucada (street band) music notation and arrangements see the latest in my series of drum lesson books, Roots Jam: World Beats! – Rhythms Wild.

  • Prices Slashed!

    Prices Slashed!

    With the launch of the latest in the Roots Jam series–Roots Jam 4: World Beats – Rhythms Wild!–prices for all the Roots Jam books and audio have been slashed.

    • Save up to 80% off previous prices!
    • New combo deals and discount bundles!
    • New book formats and audio offerings!
    • Order a la carte or in combos, for all products!

    And for a limited time–until Xmas 2019–you can order Roots Jam 4 in paperback from Amazon for 35% off (US price reduced from $14.99 to $9.75).

    world beatsRoots Jam 4: Dive deep into African drumming styles from around the world. Find simple notation for djembe, dunun, conga, tabla and batucada parts from Guinea, Mali, Cuba, Brazil, Belize, India. Groove on tribal beats for hip hop and DJ mixes, samba bands, kirtan, dance classes, or drum circles. Explore archetypal music patterns, polyrhythm, improvisation, and drum culture.

    Read more about Roots Jam 4 here and here. Order Roots Jam 4 and the other books and audio files here.