How I Learned to Play My Djembe Drum

This is a story of our own personal quest to learn how to play our djembe drums, a mission that took us to the other side of the world, Africa, and then back again to our own neighborhood.

My husband is actually the drummer in the family, starting on his first kit as a 10 year kid in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a natural born drummer and it never occurred to me to play along with him until we had been together for a few years.

In 1978, we packed up our van and moved to Whistler BC; we did not have room for any drums. After finding & setting up a place to live, we had a few months to kill before the snow came and the ski season we had planned began. We passed the time by partying; cranking up the music in our little cabin rental and soon had made friends with lots of other young ski bums in the area. The music and the party somehow led to us all drumming like crazy people.

Almost every night found us with our new buddies, banging on everything in the house using everything else in the house as drum sticks. Wooden spoons, sticks of firewood, rulers and metal cooking utensils, knick knacks and boots all were used to beat out our enthusiasm on the pots & pans, furniture, walls and floor of our little house. Oh how the landlord, living across the yard, must have wondered what was going on with those darned young people.

We finally got a real drum to beat on when we took a trip to California in 79. My husband happily played for a number of years on this Israeli made hand drum with a beautiful deep tone. A year after that, we venture off to Africa, where we thought we would reach the mecca/nirvana for drummers. We spent a year there, teaching high school in Bonthe, Sierra Leone.

It was, of course, not at all what we thought it would be like. This year in Africadrumming. As it turned out, the colonization of Africa by the European nations had done extensive damage to the African Drum Culture. It had been made illegal in some places. Now, in 1980, white people were not allowed to play the drums. Especially not women, black or white.

We did not argue about this, when in Africa do as the Africans WANT you to do. We did not drum. We listened and danced and tapped our hands & feet, but we did not push ourselves onto the culture by touching the drums. Not at first.

After 6 months or so, we went to the mainland of Sierra Leone to the big festival in Kenema. At this event, there was a booth selling djembe drums as well as sengui and ashiko drums. I do not know why we thought it was OK in this particular setting, but we purchased a small djembe drum, carrying it around the fair the rest of the evening.

You can imagine how well that went as we were quite the center of attention at this event for awhile. Many people taunted and jostled us in the crowd. At one point, my husband asked me to hold the little djembe for a minute while he looked for something in his carry bag. OH MY GOD! A riot ensued! Yelling, shouting, pushing, fist shaking and angry tirades about drums and goatskins and women and bad ju ju (magic).
Husband carried the drum the rest of the night and after we got back to our place in Bonthe, we never took it out in public again.

A few months after that, we actually happened upon the opportunity to see the Sierra Leone National Dance & Drum Troupe in Freetown, the capital city of S.L.
It was a fantastic, powerful show with 72 drummers and 30 dancers just going wild.
At the end of the show, to our amazement, the MC of the show announced that some of the troupes drums were for sale if the audience wanted to buy one. We hesitated for awhile; after all the last drum purchase went rather badly, but then, we just could not resist the chance. Up to the stage we tip-toed, hoping no one would notice that we were bright blueish white. AS IF! If anyone in the drum troupe had a problem with our race, they had the good spirit not to let on to us. They were warm & beautiful and the night was a thrill and a half for a couple of skinny white kids from the snow city as they called it.

When we left Africa, we brought those two drums with us, but we left a huge piece of our hearts and minds forever. It has been nearly 30 years since then, but I can still hear, see, smell, taste and feel our African roots deep in our being. I can hardly keep from tearing up at the thought; Africa: so beautiful, so filled with love, music, dancing & joy, you can hardly pay attention to the gripping awful poverty.

However wonderful our Afrian experience, we were still uneducated when it came to playing our hand drums. So we just went back to banging out beats in time with our collection music, which now included recordings from Africa. This would keep us happy for years, and it wasn't until 19195 that we finally came upon an opportunity to take a 7 day workshop with the infamous Nigerian Master Drummer Babtunde Olatunjii at Holllyhock Farm on Cortez Island, BC.

What a week. Fourty or so people of all ages trying to get a grip on the Baba method of teaching. He first spoke about his drum language and the different notes to be made on the drum and how to follow written and verbal rhthym patterns. My husband & I had bought an instructional video by Babtunde from some music shop somewhere. In it, Baba teaches the viewer the different hand positions and striking motions that make the different notes. Gun, GoDo and PaTa were the names of the main notes and we learned as best we could from the video.

At the workshop, we were at a big advantage compared to the other students. None of them had seen the video or heard of making notes on a drum. Baba was heavily focused on getting the students to play the written rythym patterns; practising them over and over without ever teaching the class HOW to make the notes.

Finally, one middle aged woman had the nerve to ask Baba HOW to make the different notes. The answer was astonishing and we still chuckle about it today.
BABA laughed right out loud and then said this:

Here is what you need to do; YOU SHOULD BUY MY VIDEO; then you can learn how to play the notes

Now keep in mind, each student had already forked over a hefty $500 for the workshop. The stunned awkward silence still rings in the forests of Cortez. Go Figure! Was this just another way of keeping the white guys from wrecking the drum culture or what? The lessons continued.

We never did fathom it, but we did learn that week how to make music on our drums and we are grateful to Baba for that. God Bless His African Soul, he has since passed away at the age of 90+.

We went on to become fantastic drummers; even formed a percussion band and wrote several poly-rhythmic drum songs. We taught a number of drum workshops ourselves, passing on the magic just like BABA did. Though without telling anyone to Buy My Video!