How to Play African Drums

Transcript Hello, everyone. My name is Michael Markus. I’m the president and co-founder of Wula Drum. I started off as a percussionist. I grew up playing drum set. My teacher was half Cuban, and he inspired me to play congas. From the conga, I came to the djembe from West Africa. And when I moved …

Transcript I want to share beginning technique for the Baliphone. Thank you. I’ll do that again. That’s one octave. This is technique but softly, it’s not hard. You go softly. See how I hold this tape. You see, I’m not like this because like this with your finger ahead how to be work hit the …

Transcript I want to talk to you about balafon. The balafon is made by wood, it’s not metal, called khadi, that the Susu people call khadi, and Malinke people call beng. So we made this with wood, and on the bottom we have the gourds, like calabash. It’s a fruit, it comes from the fruit …

Transcript This is how to play the log drum, sometimes also called the krin. You want to hold the stick very comfortably, and you don’t want to use too thick of a stick because that will make the sound kind of muffled. Everyone’s technique is a little bit different. I hold my stick kind of …

Transcript Man 1: This is an overview of the Log Drum or sometimes called the Krin. This instrument is played with three people, each person has their own. And this comes from the forest region of Guinea West Africa where Bamba’s from. Bemba: Yeah man. Man 1: It’s made out of white wood that’s called …

Transcript Speaker 1: These are castanets, Guinea style. What they are basically are just some basket shakers. They’re made from a piece of calabash on the bottom, nylon cord, braided nylon cord, and they have rocks in the inside that help give it its shaker sound. They each have different tones. The colors that you …

Transcript I’m going to show you how to play the Shekere. Shekere is a wonderful instrument that comes from Southwest Africa in the area like Sierra Leone, Nigeria, where long time ago, the first drums, believe it or not, were gourds. Gourds being pounded at births, ceremonies and just working in the field using to …

Transcript These wonderful instruments are known collectively as Claves, and what they are are two pieces of very resonant hardwood that is used to give timing and color and placement of the music. These are actually made from some kind of rosewood that come from Cuba. How you play the Claves and how you hold …

Transcript I’m going to show you how to play the kalimba. It is a piece of wood that is mounted on a gourd, like on the top of the bottom of a guitar, to help produce and project the sound. The kalimba, as I turn it around for you, just like with the mbira, is …

Transcript This is how to play the sandba part. People have a very different way how to hold the bell. Some people put the bell on the left side. Some people put the on the right side. My technique, my bell is in my left. Also, the way I hold the stick, I hold the …

Transcript This is how to play the DunDun part for the rhythm Kuku from Guinea West Africa. The DunDun accents and it plays off the beat and inside Kuku you have many variation but we’re gonna keep it very, very basic today just so you can get hold of the rhythm and be able to …

Transcript We’re going to show you how to play the dundun, the sangba, and the kankanee [SP]. Each person has one stick and a piece of metal to play the bell. I like to use this, but some people use the straight piece of iron. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re using iron on …

Transcript Man 1: This is an overview of the Dundun. The Dundun family, there’s three drums. They come from Guinea, West Africa, and they’re made of white wood, which is called Melina wood, cow skin, rope. Sometimes you can have rings to hold the skin, and sometimes they just sew it on. And then we …

Transcript Host: I am going to show you how to tune a conga. If you look closely here, you will see these hooks. These hooks help to add tension or release tension on this animal skin that is stretched by use of these hooks across the top of the drum. In my hand you see …

Transcript I’m going to show you how to play the shuffle pattern on the conga also known as the heel tip or heel toe pattern. This heel tip, or shuffle, or heel toe pattern is a way to play a lot of notes along with the rhythm of the music and actually make the music …

Transcript I’m gonna show you how to play a mute or a muffled tone on the conga. It is different from the open tone because your actually stopping the sound but just enough so that the drum still has a great sound, watch. I’m gonna play an open tone first like this. And now I’m …

Transcript I’m going to show you how to play the slap tone on the conga. It involves using the tips of your fingers to the center of the conga, like this. And don’t feel bad if it doesn’t sound so good at first. You will compensate when you learn how to increase your notes and …

Transcript I’m going to show you how to play the bass tone on the conga. The conga. It is played with the whole of your hand, the whole palm of your hand touching the center of the drum like this. Watch me, really relaxed; other hand; or you can do two together. You want to …

Transcript I want to teach you how to play an open tone on the conga. The conga. You start by allowing your hand to hit the top of the conga in a very relaxed fashion. Like this. Always looking at your position, not moving too far into the drum for the open tone, not moving …

Transcript Okay everybody, I’m going to give you an overview of the conga. The conga is a drum that actually comes from Cuba, but listen to this. It’s really, really from the Congo, okay? These drums that you see in front of me are drums that first originated as molasses barrels. Can you believe that? …

Transcript Speaker 1: This is the difference between the conga and the djembe. If you look closely, you see the conga is a little taller, djembe in this time is a little shorter. The tension on the skin is achieved by the pulling with these metal rods. The djembe is with a rope. Okay? The …

Transcript You want your drum to last a long time. How do you maintain your djembe drum? I’m going to give you some great tips on how to make sure that your drum lasts a long time and hopefully, generation to generation. The first and most important thing to realize is that the skin does …

Transcript OK. I’m going to show you some quick tips on how to tune your djembe. These are for rope tuned djembes. The first thing you’ve got to look is at each strand you’re counting as one, so you’re going to make a weaving pattern. This is one. This is two. You’re going to take …

Transcript Okay, here’s a very quick overview on how a djembe from West Africa is made. The drums from West Africa are handmade, and they’re made out of one piece of wood. It’s very solid. One piece of hard wood. The woods have different names from Africa. You have acajou, lenge, fady. You have duki-duki …

Transcript If you’re interested in getting a djembe drum, how do you know which is the drum to get? Djembe drums are very popular now. They come from many different places. They originate in West Africa, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire (which is Ivory Coast), and Senegal. They make a lot of djembes in …

Transcript This is two djembe played together. It’s like this. Sometimes we play two djembe together to make a better sound. You’ve got a djembe base. I’ve got the solo djembe. If I play this one, I don’t have to put, I’m just going to put my knees, but If I play this, I have …

Transcript So, the bright and cuckoo go all tom. So, this is the first, the bright. I’m go very slowly. This is the first one. So, this is a very slow. So, if I want to go to medium, I’m just going to go a little more fast. Then I go. . . Now, if …

Transcript Q: We’re going to show you the two accompaniment, first and second accompaniment, for kuku with the break. Bimba’s going to play the first part. I’m going to play the second part. His drum is higher pitched. My drum is lower pitched. We go from the break so we can put the rhythm together …

Transcript Now we’re going to learn how to play the second part to Cuckoo from Guinea, West Africa. This is for the second Jim Bay accompaniment, so, it’s a little bit lower in pitch than the first part. The drums, they want to work together, higher pitch, lower pitch. This part we start with two …

Transcript Okay, we are going to show you the first accompaniment for Kuku, from Guinea, West Africa for the Djembe. When we say first accompaniment we mean the higher drum, not the soloist, but the first accompaniment player. There is only four notes, slap, base, and two tones. First I play slap, base, two tones, …

Transcript Speaker 1: Here is another idea for an intermediate or advanced solo idea to play it on the djembe with the accompaniment. I’m gonna play a basic djembe accompaniment and master drummer Mbemba Bengora it’s gonna play a little bit more of a complicated idea so that you can learn how to play over …

Transcript Speaker 1: Okay, we want to give you some basic djembe solo ideas. Maybe you’re new to improvising and you don’t know exactly, how do I play the improvised solo? Bemba is going to play the solo. I’m going to play the basic accompaniment to keep the time. His idea is first to just …

Transcript We wanna show you some good patterns there are for beginners, for the djembe drums, from West Africa. For me, my favorite one is to play 3 tones and 5 slaps, but instead of playing them straight I’m gonna swing the rhythm and this is gonna help me learn the feeling of the West …

Transcript Man: Before we learn the African rhythms let’s learn some warm up exercises on the djembe drum. This will help get you in tune with the rhythm and get yourself ready to play the African rhythms. One of the favorite things I like to play is something both for the right and both for …

Transcript Speaker 1: Okay, today we are going to learn how to play the flam stroke on the Djembe drum. Flam is really an American word, it means almost together, almost the same time. You will see this in the solo technique of the Djembe, or from any drum. The way you play the flam …

Transcript Male 1: We’re going to learn how to play the Muffled Slap on the Djembe. This is not as common, but sometimes it’s used with the bass Djembe parts, or the soloists can use it to embellish what they’re playing on the lead parts. My drum I have here is a low tune drum. …

Transcript Speaker 1: How do we play the slap on the djembe? The slap is the highest pitched sound, it’s not the loudest, they should all be equal in volume, but the slap has the higher pitch. The way I make that slap is I open my fingers just a little bit. I make sure …

Transcript Speaker 1: Now we will show you how to play the bass sound on the djembe drum. The most important thing when playing the bass is you have to tilt your drum. If my drum is flat, the sound doesn’t come out. How does yours sound? Speaker 2: My sounds good because of the …

Transcript Speaker 1: Now we are going to learn how to play the tone on the Djembe drum. The tone sound is your middle pitch. Your base is low, and then your slap is high. The tone, really helps define the melody between the two, or three, or four, different Djembe parts. And the way …

Transcript Speaker 1: We’re going to show you the basic sounds of the djembe drum. The djembe drum has three basic sounds: bass, tone, slap. Played together, in different combinations, that’s how the music is made. Each drum is tuned a little differently. Mine is low. Speaker 2: Mine’s high. Speaker 1: Together the music …

Transcript Speaker 1: Before we even play the drum, we have to learn how to hold the djembe drum and what position to be in so that you can be comfortable to play for a long period of time. The first thing I do is I tilt the drum away from myself so that the …

Transcript Speaker 1: Today we want to give you an overview of the Djembe. The djembe is a very popular drum from Africa. It has a goat skin on the top. It’s made out of a big piece of wood, one solid piece of wood, and it has rope to keep it tight and to …