Jeffrey Greenberg-- Music & Drumming

Jeffrey Greenberg - Music & Drumming

I participate in the the large, chaotic, democratic drum circles like those in Golden Gate Park. It sometimes great and sometimes awful. The sociology of it is fascinating:
How do a group of 40 drummers start and end a song without saying a word?
What roles can you can play within the group in the middle of a song? Do you anchor the rhythm no matter what others do? Do you add a contrasting rhythm?, Do you solo?, Do you tradeoff solos?, Do you speed up the beat?, Do you try to persuade the others to go with your riff?, etc.

To my ears, a deeply and richly new and inspiring music is that of the traditional music of Banama people who live in Mali, Senegal, and Ghana. This is a collection of related tribes; one of most well known being Dogon (See the Metropolitan Museum in NYC for example). This drum-based music is based on particular rhythms or songs with particular accompaniments played on particular drums. There are established introductions, breaks, and solo styles that go with each song. And the music goes with a dance. Both the music and dance is improvisational, feeding each other. The drummer soloist will lead and reflect the dancer, so that the music has a powerful physical relation that most western musics do not. Thus the musical structure isn't purely internally driven by the logic of music but also by the bodily nature of the dance. The rhythms have microbeat adjustments, aka 'swing'. There are hundreds of rhythms.

Here are some music samples I made of some of the core rhythms of Banama style West African music. Over these core rhythms you would typically hear a solo when performed live.
Play these loud! and with something that can support some bass, rather than PC speakers... like a headphone.

Kakilambe - As said on Soul Train: "It's a nice beat. Easy to dance to. I rate it 45"
Sugu - A six beat rhythm usually played at weddings. Has a slightly tilted, irregular feel coming from an three accented Djembe hits against a strong dunun & djembe base. Plainly a different feel than a 4/4 Eastern European HaVaNagileh.
Komo - This is a deadly spirit and rarely heard outside of the secret society that hosts it
Tage - Pronounced "tah-gay". A blacksmith or foundry rhythm. Listen for the repeated pair of staccato hits which are the djembe core, and the dunun bringing in the lower 6 beat pulse. A second djembe has a 4 beat overlay. You can imagine the smithys wielding hammers on hot metal.
Dnunba - (duh-noon-bah) Known as the "Strong man rhythm". By various counts there are fifty different dnunba rhythms. It's built from a 3 beat djembe pattern sounding something like "pont tee-pont" with an underlying and extraordinary 24 beat dunun pattern giving the overall structure.
Mdendiani - (Mahn-jee-awnee) A young woman dance.
Sunu-gui ("sunu-gwee")
Yabu
Wolosodon

I have good results playing these in Winamp, which can more fluidly loop these, while Quicktime is really poor at playing these as loops...These are composed of the drums: dunun, kenkeni, sangpan, and djembe and put together using software "Henry's Percussion Studio".

You can hear the real thing from my teacher Jeremy Chevier and his teacher master drummer Abdoulaye Diakite.

I'm working on translating these to other instuments (e.g. piano), and in 'implementing' them as full blown pieces in their own right.

Last updated July 22, 2004