Djembe, Sabar, Kpanlogo... ALL IS BONGO!

[Mikeleza]

I was talking with my friends last night about differences in culture and rhythms between all the countries of West Africa. To us, its a funny subject because so many African teachers are so staunchly convinced that their version of certain songs and certain rhythms are the ORIGINAL versions. I am always joking with the guys by trying to stop them from playing sabar so that I can get more commitment to djembe and duns... This got us talking about Kpanlogo, Sabar and Djembe and about how, the further you go back in time, the more, all these instruments would have been THE SAME INSTRUMENT -

I have read about how, originally, the djembe would have had pegs much like a sabar?

If someone could post some info on the evolution of the djembe, that would be great!

When you think about this, it makes you realise why there is so much confusion about the evolution and development of each group of peoples music. After all... Music and people are not set in stone but rather flow like water from country to country. No wonder all the lines between rhythms are constantly being blurred. Obviously with the coming of the more modern age of transport and communication... This blur is happening faster than ever!

Not only this... but to realise... Djembe really is a MODERN instrument when compared to sabar or kpanlogo.

So... get with the times!

[Michel]

It all started with a hollow tree, I guess.

[the kid]

And Originally Bongo was a pounding pot.

Interesting topic. An even earlier resonator and drum would be the calabash. Who knows what lurked in the African jungle back in the day where the place was full of huge trees and calabash plants. Crazy to think there could have been all sorts of instruments and what we have left are the ones that survived.

today we see a beautiful marriage between wood skin and calabash in all the west african instruments. It's the natural magic combined with human ingenuity that makes the music

Bongo it up

[freefeet]

I thought Kpanlogo was a modern day twist on Ewe drums. Very similar at least.

Bougarabou can still be found with pegs, and again, very similar to Sabar.

I've yet to see a Sabar drum with metal hoops, although i did just pick up a Kpanlogo drum with mech tuning hoops (weird thing is that it's got a thin goat skin on it - just about to put a thick cow on instead).

But whatever the first ever drum was, who could have foreseen the incredible journey that simple beginning was going to make.

[e2c]

And some rumberos in Cuba (and the US) are still playing packing crates...

[Afoba]

these instruments have never be the same.
people can invent things that are relatively close to each other in different places at about the same time (writing, boats, etc...). And - let's be honest - the idea to build a drum is much less spectecular than to construct a car.

The djembé pegs are different from the sabar pegs. It has been stuck between the leather ropes that were used to tense the djembé and that some of us still know.
I don't remeber having seen it in a "traditional context", but Billy had seen it as a child and made one djembé of that style some twelve years ago to show it to my father.

Greetings, Daniel

[e2c]

There are so many different kinds of drums in Africa - and in countries where African people were taken, here in the West.

I think we have to be careful about this, in terms of not being quick to judge that something is a "djembe" simply because it's a large wooden more-or-less goblet-shaped thing.

We all work - and define things - from what we know. But I think we have to be open to learning new things all the time.

[Mikeleza]

these instruments have never be the same.
people can invent things that are relatively close to each other in different places at about the same time (writing, boats, etc...). And - let's be honest - the idea to build a drum is much less spectecular than to construct a car.

Yes for sure but I reckon mostly ideas are shared amongst people.

Sometimes freakish things happen around the globe but the majority of the time things happen for simple reasons. I can just picture that any person that moved between tribes or visited other parts of the african continent would have been constantly given new ideas of how to make things. Thats the way the world works for the majority of the time.

When you go back in time, the name of the drum and the way it is made would surely change.

The evolution of the drum (not that I know much) as I imagine it, would have been much like the evolution of rhythms.

You start with a basic pulse... someone claps their hand in a constant motion and time and then someone adds a counter rhythm through voice or more clapping. Over time people add more rhythms to it and add different instruments. Just like with the dun ensemble.... traditionally songs would have existed with only one dun and gradually more duns were added. The result that we see today with rhythms like Bolokonondo are modern complex creations where the original basic pulse "seems to" have disappeared.

When I see the similarities between different peg drums from Angola, Ghana, Senegal and other countries, it tells me that these drums are closer to the root creation of the african drum. Though there are subtle difference in these peg drums, the basic principle is the same and a lot of the techniques look similar also. Technique depends a lot on the way an instrument is tuned and the shape of the edge of the drum. I'm pretty sure that the way djembe players play today has little relevance to the way they played before the use of rope and steel.

I'm not trying to discourage people learning technique or tradition... obviously A LOT OF ADVANCES have been made in the past thousand years and that culture is great to learn!

The idea is to allow ourselves to also open our minds to the possibilities of how we came to this modern day situation.

... AND hopefully get the topic rolling, I'm sure there must be some people out there with some interesting info on the subject

[e2c]

I think that it would take a lot of time in Africa - includes finding very old drums, if possible - to be able to truly establish some kind of historical framework, and even then...it would more than likely be impossible to trace back very far.

I think your idea is an interesting one, but it is not something I feel I can accept at face value, without actual research.

While I understand the ideas behind less "mechanical" ideas of tuning - in relation to what you are saying - I think it would be necessary to go beyond speculation. What does Doudou N'Diaye Rose (sabar master) have to say on this topic? (Ditto for master drummers from various parts of Ghana...)

Also... there are many drums with tacked-on heads. Tacks of some kind - or glue - is one of the simplest ways to head a drum. Heat can be used to tune the drum...

[Mikeleza]

I think your idea is an interesting one, but it is not something I feel I can accept at face value, without actual research.

Well I'm glad about that... I wouldn't trust a word I say.

I did a little bit of googling the other day and this was the only thing I found.

http://www.djembefola.fr/djembe/djembe_djembes.php

We can always trust in Djembefola!

This page says how the djembe used to be pegged in French... Then it goes on to say that the Remo djembe is by far a much more superior kind of bongo with great ringing tones!

[Afoba]

these instruments have never be the same.
people can invent things that are relatively close to each other in different places at about the same time (writing, boats, etc...). And - let's be honest - the idea to build a drum is much less spectecular than to construct a car.

...
When you go back in time, the name of the drum and the way it is made would surely change.
The evolution of the drum (not that I know much) as I imagine it, would have been much like the evolution of rhythms.

You start with a basic pulse... someone claps their hand in a constant motion and time and then someone adds a counter rhythm through voice or more clapping. Over time people add more rhythms to it and add different instruments. Just like with the dun ensemble.... traditionally songs would have existed with only one dun and gradually more duns were added. The result that we see today with rhythms like Bolokonondo are modern complex creations where the original basic pulse "seems to" have disappeared.

When I see the similarities between different peg drums from Angola, Ghana, Senegal and other countries, it tells me that these drums are closer to the root creation of the african drum. Though there are subtle difference in these peg drums, the basic principle is the same and a lot of the techniques look similar also. Technique depends a lot on the way an instrument is tuned and the shape of the edge of the drum. I'm pretty sure that the way djembe players play today has little relevance to the way they played before the use of rope and steel.

I'm not trying to discourage people learning technique or tradition... obviously A LOT OF ADVANCES have been made in the past thousand years and that culture is great to learn!

The idea is to allow ourselves to also open our minds to the possibilities of how we came to this modern day situation. ...

1) drums/rhythms/modern
Hi Mike, there is some truth in what you say concerning the development of rythms and the changed or changing situation during the last 50-55 years. Of course rhythms develop, they have not been given to Adam the eighth day. But I beg you to take care about how you call this changing and not to mix up different meanings of "modernity".
You say "rhythms like Bolokonondo are modern complex creations",
"the way djembe players play today has little relevance to the way they played before the use of rope and steel" and you talk about "this modern day situation".

Well what means "modern"? In Europe it is a term to describe everything that has appeared after the French Revolution. We then got the term "post modern", which is used for everything after 1945 in science. In our every day life we're used to say modern, when we talk about post modern (or "post post modern"?) phenomenons. It's difficult to use these terms for WA. Normally it had to be "modern" for the colonial times after 1789/1800 and post modern for the time after 1958/60 that's to say after independance. When I say "modern" (talking about the development of WA music) I refer to post modern phenomenons, such as ballets and their influences on traditional music. We have to keepthis separated: Bolokonondo might have appearde after 1800, but that doesn't make it a modern rhythm in the pure sense "Modern" stands as the opposite of "traditional" when we talk about music from WA - it's not just a time marker anymore!
The way the djembé is built today is (post) modern for sure. The way the djembé is played is very different from situation to situation. The most (post modern) player in the world will be Adama Dramé. Then everyone who has played in the ballets for some time is a kind of (post) modern player (even if he knows the traditions well - like e.g. Famoudou). Mansa Camio plays quite traditionally, but still he is a (post) modern djembé player in another sense, for he has lived in Bamako and Abidjan which has changed a bit the music in his home village when he came back.

We have to be very careful talking about the "modern situation" (I'm not as careful as I describe it here every minute, either), because this is a huge complex or even several complexes. What I want to say is, Bolokonondo can be much newer than other rhythms (we don't even know), having a look at the rhythm's length, but it is a traditional rhythm. And traditional rhythms can still appear today (and you couldn't call them modern, because this term is taken for the ballet culture and the newer kora stuff in Mali).


2) universality
It's always interesting to think about the development of things we see today. And of course, things might have developed from "easier" to more complex. But the idea of "universality", that some things are the same or where the same everywhere or in a huge area has often been tried by ethnologues and was nearly always wrong.
At the same time the same principe can be used by different groups (have a look at frame drums from Kenya and Ireland, who took it from whom?). The principe of pegs exists in Ghana, Togo and in Senegal (...?); this is quite interesting. But it only proves that it is a good system for many people, not that their drums have been the same before. The djembé has never had this kind of tuning (we know both that we can never prove our theories or ideas, so we are free to speculate d;-) ).

3) dunduns
You say probably the second (and sometimes third) dundun has appeared later. Might be, who would say before playing: "Listen, we need two or three of it"? But probably the djembé is the instrument that has joined last in a lot of regions. Most rhythms we play outside Africa are dundun rhythms, not djembé rhythms. Rainer Polak had this idea of seperating djembé rhythms from dundun rhythms. I still don't know, if it's a good idea, because it's quite hard to tell this today, and I don't know if he found a second rhythm after Soli/Suku that he would classify as djembé rhythm. But it's a nice approach - just as your questions: I don't think the question is "right", but still it can lead us to some interesting points - and that's all knowledge or science is about.

So my provocative thesis to end this post:
In every place where djembé and dunduns play together, the dundun (the less complex instrument to link it to your historical approach, Mike) has been first.

4) I forgot something important: There are the so called Kèuru drums in Upper Guinea that are probably older than djembé and dundun (my thoughts). There are different style: some look like not finished djembés others are tall (solo instrument) and have 3 or 4 legs. THEY ARE PLAYED WITH STICKS! And there are neither pegs nor ropes. Fakoli is still played on these drums. Everyone has to decide, if the contradicts my thesis from above. The counter thesis would be that the Kèuru are the origin of both, djembé and dundun, what would be much closer to your thoughts, Mike, I guess.
By the way: I think that blacksmiths weren't automatically the first who played djembé. Maybe they were the first who played (or only built?) the drums that were there before!
Blacksmiths in the beginning of djembé playing is no fact, just a nice idea, too, that has become a nice little history for djembé pupils.

Greetings, Daniel

[Afoba]

http://www.djembefola.fr/djembe/djembe_djembes.php
We can always trust in Djembefola!

Can we? The citation of the french text:
"Sur les dizaines de tambour africains, c'est un des rares à être joué à deux mains nues. Ce tambour est originaire d'Afrique de l'ouest et plus particulièrement du mandingue."

Djembé played with both hands, from the manden area - correct!

"Les pays du mandingue sont issus du découpage de l'empire mandingue fondé au XIIIeme siècle par Soundiata Keita. Ces pays mandingues sont au nombre de 6 (Guinée, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sénégal, Gambie et Côte d'Ivoire ...)."

Anarchronsitic point of view: No one knows, if or how the djembé and Sundyata's empire are related. It's a kind of nation building in literature that we have here.
Very hard to call Burkina and IC manden countries. Is France a germanic country?
Burkina is no djembé country at all, Senegal and Gambia have got some djembé isles. CI is a modern (!) mixture of everything, so including djembé.

"Dans ces pays, le djembé est joué par diverses ethnies comme les Malinkés, les Khassonkés, les Bambaras, les Peuls ... "

Neither Khasonka, nor Fula played djembé, and according to Rainer Polak the djembé was played in only one of the two 19th century Bamana kingdoms (I think Ségou and not Kaarta).
Especially french sources like to draw a line between the Mali (Melli) empire in the 13th century and todays Mali, which is not helpful, if you are looking for something true or likely.

Greets, Daniel

[Mikeleza]

Wow... Very nice and critical thoughts there Afoba. Thanks!

My thoughts about the word "modern".

You are right, people like to put the two concepts at polar opposites... Traditional and Modern but I think this is a mistake. Something that is traditional can also be modern I think. ??

My use of the word modern was to speak relatively to a time before the "djembe" as we know it. My concept of the word modern is something that is "a more recent creation" and this is relative. I was comparing what has happened in the last 1000 - 1500 years to the years before that period. I know that is not a common use of the word modern but I was trying to highlight that I am referring to a LONG TIME AGO. Sorry if thats confusing.

The instrument that you mentioned from the north of guinea reminds me of drums that I have seen from Ghana that look like big kpanlogos but have feet so that more bass can come out the bottom while they stand freely. These are play like duns as well.

Duns are another mystery.
Before ropes, did they tie the two skins on either side with more pieces of leather? How did they tension two skins... Pegs on both sides?

Kpanlogos also utilise string or rope... Do you think they used animal parts as rope before or were they pegged more like Sabar?