Ethnographic Description

            I attended an African drumming class in Cambridge, near MIT.  This event was much more personalized due to my own participation and the intimate environment in which it took place.  Upon arrival, Moussa, the teacher was surprised to see people besides his “regulars.”  As we entered the small art gallery off the Central MBTA stop, Moussa was already jamming with his eclectic group of regulars.  His nephew Solo, who was visiting from Mali, outfitted us with drums and away we went. 

We were all given Djembe drums of different sizes.  It almost felt natural to hold the drum after we had learned the basics just hours before by Mr. Agbeli.  Moussa started with the basics, teaching us three different types of “hits” on the drum— bass, edge, and slap— used to create different sounds.  Everything was done in rhythm, even the technical teaching of different sounds.  Moussa taught us “beginners” a very basic rhythm that combined all three hits and served as the background rhythm to what would become an overlapping array of synchronized sounds.  Once we learned this rhythm, Moussa said, “Do what you can do.  You will not be me, and you will not be anyone else this class.  We have played for years, and you start now.”  I found this notion of accepting our “novice-ness” interesting and refreshing.  This set up a very relaxed learning environment.

Moussa got all of us playing our basic rhythm together and then gave his other students various rhythms to play.  He would point at someone and say, “HERE!” and then play a rhythm over and over again.  The student would watch, attempt, and then perfect the rhythm, all while we played our basic rhythm with a bass drummer.  He would then go on to the next person and teach them yet another layer.  He repeated this process with his regular students until all were busy with their respective rhythms.  Moussa would then solo, mixing rhythms I knew from my jazz, funk, and gospel drumming background, such as triplets, with those that I had never heard before.  The unbelievable crispness, loudness, and speed he played with sometimes distracted me from my own rhythm.  I was lucky enough to sit next to him, and when he could tell that I was catching on quickly, he gave him his backup Djembe so that I could play a “good” drum.  He said to me, “Here, now you are professional,” and I took the drum with pride.  Moussa showed off his skills, but never intimidated his students, always laughing and encouraging them by pushing their limits.  We learned a very specific rhythm to “count in” the group.  Rather than the American “1, 2, 1234” method, African drumming consists of a distinct rhythm that the group plays together to count in and another distinct rhythm to end the piece.

Moussa implemented a “call and response” or “do as I do” method of teaching, though he stopped occasionally to give advice, especially to us beginners.  He told us to relax our arms, breath, not to think, and told Teddy to relax in his chest in order for his hands to do what his brain demands.  The most interesting piece of advice he gave us was not to count.  This was especially hard for me, having learned drumming in a very rudiment based system designed around playing written music to a metronome.  His advice proved useful, and once I stopped trying to figure out a time signature, I began to hear the various interlocking patterns and didn’t judge my timing off of counting but rather off of the other drum patterns.  I immediately connected this experience to the Titon reading on Agbekor, both in that we learned through full speed rehearsals and developed ears for intricate weavings of other patterns.

The “regulars” were all white and were aged from about 30-60.  There were both men and women, and they seemed to come from very different backgrounds.  Many of them had worked with Moussa for around 5 years, and one woman had been there for over 11.  She said she once walked by and heard the drumming, saw white people involved and decided to give it a try.  She now works with Nani Agbeli and has taken four trips to Mali to both learn and perform.  Most of the other regulars had similar stories, stating that they never planned to start drumming but once they tried it, they couldn’t stop.  Moussa explained to me after the class that he started as a young boy, and his father did not approve of him choosing music as a profession.  He explained that he would play in the street, play at weddings, baby showers, among other events.  He told me that he would play easily for 14 or 15 hours a day and then finished the class with a comedic and blunt, “Has everyone paid me? Good, see you all next week!”

*I know this is about a hundred words over, but I figured better to give a complete description rather than cut out important info that I’d learned.