Category: Blog
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In Awe of The New School, But I love Folkloric traditional Styles
I love and I am in awe of the new school, the ballet style of drumming and the super fast hands and gymnastic like techniques of todays young and modern djembe foals. Truly amazing stuff. Beautiful and Intriguing. Most of all it impresses me. But…does it make me smile? And what am I feeling inside… Read More »
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How To Solo On Djembe
The Djembe Solo Demystified: What is a djembe solo? For me, (depending on the scenario and situation), a djembe solo is a story we..or someone tells. Like any good story It has a beginning a climax (or climaxes) and an ending. There is a build and their is space. But how do we tell this… Read More »
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The Djembe Solo
The beginners, *(all of our) need to solo in traditional drumming situations. Most people getting involved with hand drums such as congas and djembes get inspired by seeing a video, being at a drum circle or a performance where they have seen someone soloing. Something clicks. Something calls us. We are moved in a very… Read More »
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Understanding West African Jenbe (Djembe) and Dunun Music.
When we concentrate only on soloing on the jenbe, and not learning or playing the dunun we are only experiencing the rhythm arrangement or composition from one small perspective. You are relating to it from a small and stuck position. Its like driving down the highway and only seeing the back of the car in… Read More »
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Playing Ballet Style Dunun (aka Djun Djun) vs Traditional Style Dunun
What is the difference between playing ballet style dunun drums and traditional style dunun playing? Traditional is sideways played by three or two players and Ballet stye the dunun are played standing up. But it goes beyond this. The dunun are a set of three double sided drums hit with sticks that make up the… Read More »
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Where To Buy A Djembe Drum? The Best Djembes.
Where should you buy a djembe drum? And what is the best djembe drum? Should you go to a large distributor on line, a chain store, a small company or an individual artist? This is a question often asked to me. I went on line and did a google search and was shocked what came up… Read More »
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The learning Process and Drumming
The learning process and drumming, transcending the illusion of ” I can’t”. I am constantly hearing people say, “I can’t do that, I can’t do this” when I am trying to teach them or share something new, “odd” or very different. I always get a lot of excuses. And they are often very convincing, because… Read More »
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How To Learn Difficult Rhythm Compositions
People often ask me, “how do I learn a new djembe rhythm composition”? and say “I can never remember how the parts go in west african drumming”!. Memorization is indeed challenging for most of us. I would like to tell you how I do it and offer some suggestions that may be helpful and fun.… Read More »
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Playing at speed, how to play faster or slower with out freaking out.
I have noticed that most of the time even those of us who practice djembe or dunu regularly are practicing at a normal comfortable speeds or moreover, the same speed with out knowing it. We may be learning new phrases or rhythms, but generally we default to our own comfortable natural speed. The problem is… Read More »
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Overwhelmed learning? Here is a plan for how to approach and learn west african drumming.
Overwhelmed trying to learn to play west african drums? We live in a day in age where we have so much information available to us via internet, youtube,facebook, books, cds, etc. that it is easy to get overwhelmed and not learn anything. For some people it is hard to focus on only one thing. They… Read More »
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One Style Or Different Drumming Styles? It’s All Music.
There are several different ways for serious students to learn and to study traditional and folkloric drumming from other countries. Today I am going to talk about two different approaches, completely different and both are valid in my book. We can try to be universal, find commonality and study the underlying principles and basic structures… Read More »
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What is the best conga drum skin to use?
In my experience over the years with conga drums and conga skins I have found that there is no best skin. It is what skin best suits your needs. Do you have an old conga drum, bongos or other hand drums lying around because they don’t sound good? Putting on a new head is relatively… Read More »