DVD Dununba & Soko instructional by "Laou Laou" Bangoura

[bubudi]

for dununba stuff, i'd start with these titles:

An bada Sofoli

hamanah

famdou rhythm der malinke

those are great cd titles, but they are not instructional cd's.
this is the only instructional dvd for dununba rhythms that i am aware of.
still, get the other 3 cds. it will help in learning dununba rhythms as listening to them the way they are meant to be played is a very important part of learning them properly.

[dleufer]

So, the review...
As an instructional dvd this is very much African style; fast, no breakdown, no repetition.
If you don't understand the basics of this family of rhythms you will struggle to learn them from this dvd.
If however you are already familiar (quite familiar) with dununba rhythms you could pick up a few new ones with a bit of work.

Each rhythm begins with the kenkeni, then sangban, dununba, accompaniment and finally solo.
Personally I would prefer to have each part played separately in relation to the standard onbeat accompaniment rather than the offbeat kenkeni. By the time the dununba comes in there's already a lot of off beat madness going on which makes it hard to pick up for newbies. But then again these aren't rhythms for newbies.
I could pick up then dunun parts but only because I could relate them to the other dununba rhythms I know. If I didn't already know Bolokonondo I'm not sure I would have picked it up from this DVD, at least not without a lot of work.

For me the most serious criticism of this DVD however is its reliability. I'm not sure how much faith I put in Laou Laou as a teacher. I totally trust Nansady Keita to teach me Dununba rhythms from Hamana but I'm not so sure about this guy. For the basics this is no problem but for the dunun variations it seems to be more messing about than proper variations. When I did Famoudou's course the dunun players would sometimes mess around with the patterns but if we copied them Famoudou would go crazy because he didn't just want us messing around without a full understanding of how what we played interacted with the other parts. In contrast his variaitions were really beautiful, rhythmically and melodically interacting with the rest of the rhythm. The variations the dunun players do on this instructional DVD don't strike me as something I'd bother putting my time into learning.
I had a similar, but more extreme, experience when a Senegalese teacher tried to teach me Dunungbe and I noticed he was tapping his foot WITH the kenkeni. I quickly asked to do a different rhythm. Basically, I like to learn my Malinke rhythms from Malinke teachers, Susu rhythms from Susu. Especially for stuff as complex as Takosaba.

[Dugafola]

So, the review...
As an instructional dvd this is very much African style; fast, no breakdown, no repetition.
If you don't understand the basics of this family of rhythms you will struggle to learn them from this dvd.
If however you are already familiar (quite familiar) with dununba rhythms you could pick up a few new ones with a bit of work.

Each rhythm begins with the kenkeni, then sangban, dununba, accompaniment and finally solo.
Personally I would prefer to have each part played separately in relation to the standard onbeat accompaniment rather than the offbeat kenkeni. By the time the dununba comes in there's already a lot of off beat madness going on which makes it hard to pick up for newbies. But then again these aren't rhythms for newbies.
I could pick up then dunun parts but only because I could relate them to the other dununba rhythms I know. If I didn't already know Bolokonondo I'm not sure I would have picked it up from this DVD, at least not without a lot of work.

For me the most serious criticism of this DVD however is its reliability. I'm not sure how much faith I put in Laou Laou as a teacher. I totally trust Nansady Keita to teach me Dununba rhythms from Hamana but I'm not so sure about this guy. For the basics this is no problem but for the dunun variations it seems to be more messing about than proper variations. When I did Famoudou's course the dunun players would sometimes mess around with the patterns but if we copied them Famoudou would go crazy because he didn't just want us messing around without a full understanding of how what we played interacted with the other parts. In contrast his variaitions were really beautiful, rhythmically and melodically interacting with the rest of the rhythm. The variations the dunun players do on this instructional DVD don't strike me as something I'd bother putting my time into learning.
I had a similar, but more extreme, experience when a Senegalese teacher tried to teach me Dunungbe and I noticed he was tapping his foot WITH the kenkeni. I quickly asked to do a different rhythm. Basically, I like to learn my Malinke rhythms from Malinke teachers, Susu rhythms from Susu. Especially for stuff as complex as Takosaba.

thanks for the review. i felt like i could have reviewed this DVD with just watching the preview.

you echoed my thoughts about this DVD and learning in general.

[michi]

I had a similar, but more extreme, experience when a Senegalese teacher tried to teach me Dunungbe and I noticed he was tapping his foot WITH the kenkeni. I quickly asked to do a different rhythm.

I've had a teacher like that too, who was tapping his foot with the kenkeni. When I asked him about it, he said "Don't worry about it--there are pulses everywhere." I sort of agree, in the sense that dundunbas are probably best learned by relaxing into the rhythm and perceiving the thing as a whole. Once I understand that, it becomes easy to put the beat in the "correct" place (off-beat with the kenkeni). And, once I understand the rhythm as a whole, I can really choose to perceive the beat wherever I like...

I agree with review overall. This DVD is OK, but not great. And learning from it is possible only with some prior exposure to dundunbas. In some ways, trying to learn from this DVD feels much like trying to learn "the African way". Listen and imitate, without any break-down or explanation.

Cheers,

Michi.

[bubudi]

thanks very much for the review daniel and michi. i thought it was going to be very much the typical african pedagogy. having said that, it is rare to find an african teacher who teaches the way mamady does, or how a western teacher would typically teach it.

with regards to tapping along with the kenkeni, i've seen plenty of guineans do that. does it mean that they're perceiving the main pulse wrong? hell no! the kenkeni and dununba are on one pulse, the main djembe accompaniment on another... west african drummers generally have no problem with multiple pulses in a rhythm. western drummers, who aren't brought up listening to polyrhythms, generally find it hard to accept multiple pulses and relax into it enough to feel the rhythm as a whole multilayered groove. add to that the way westerners are apt to want the quick fix... they want to 'get' the rhythm right now. it can take months to truly understand dunungbe.

having learned in a variety of ways, i'm not quick to criticise the typical african way of teaching. it might not spoon feed us how things are meant to go together, the way the more western pedagogies do, but the three most important aspects of learning music (in any approach) are hearing, practice and correction. you need to hear the rhythm the way it's meant to be played, over and over and over... you need hours of practice playing your part in relation to the other parts, and to be placed back in every time you stuff it up. that's a given whether you learn from laou laou, tam tam mandingue or any other djembe teacher. the typically african way encourages you to play, stuff up a little, get placed back, until you can relax enough with it and hold your own. if it takes one person 4 months to learn dunungbe, it will probably take them just as long with both ways. you might argue they get the picture earlier with a more western approach, but that doesn't equal a full understanding and comfort with the music with all its parts. some people even say that the african way gets you there (to full understanding and comfort with the music as a whole) quicker.

when it comes to a dvd, yes, the western approach is preferable for many rhythms because you don't have the teacher there with you to correct you, therefore you need a decent understanding of the part in relation to the pulse to be able to do reasonably okay on your own. when it comes to dununba rhythms, i think that it's highly unlikely you'll ever be able to pick any of them up from a dvd correctly, without a teacher there to correct you, unless you're already well versed with at least a couple of dunun rhythms.