Mali vs. Guinea Sunu

[bubudi]

duga, why would the 3 dunun setup have the effect of making the rhythms more 'straight' ?
these days in bamako it's not at all uncommon to see that kind of setup.

michi, there are some guinean rhythms with a lot of swing. definitely the sankaran and wasolon rhythms. also, balakulandian and yankadi. when the rhythm is slower it tends to be more swung. in conakry they like to start fast and this has also influenced the villages as most of the good drummers go to conakry to increase their opportunities.

in bamako they also like to play fast but they tend to start slow and swung. when malians switch to fast sunu, it sounds fairly straight to me (although not very similar to the sunu that mamady keita recorded). in the mali style most of the rhythms actually have different dunun/djembe parts depending on the phase/tempo of the rhythm. they often go from a swung binary to a more straight ternary feel, but they actually still bear some resemblance. intuitively, you're playing the same rhythm but changing the feel and dropping/shifting some notes. take the ballet dunun for sunu for example:
d . . d|. . . s|. . s .|s . . d

drop the last dununba and the second sangban stroke and put the first sangban stroke on the beat and you've got the fast pattern:
d . d | . . . | s . . | s . .

you have to hear some recordings of malian sunu to appreciate this:


mali

siaka doumbia et al - mali drums: young guns, tracks 5 & 7
donkili: call to dance: festival music from mali, track 3
ibrahima sarr - porte 386, track 5
mady keita - traditional djembe music from the bamana & manding peoples, track 1
soungalo coulibaly - naya, track 8
mare sanogo - fourassi (one of the last tracks)
francois dembele - san toro, track 5
sega sidibe - sega kan do (cd, dvd & book instructional package)
mamadou kante - drums of mali, track 5
abdoul doumbia (self titled), track 4
abdoul doumbia - denbaya, track 4
moussa traore - mali foli, track 2


guinea

fore fote - wonbere, track 7
africa sabou njouma (feat mamadou delmundo keita) - house of roots, track 1
mamady keita & sewa kan - live at couleur cafe, track 6
mamady keita & sewa kan - nankama, track 6
karamba diabate - journey into rhythm, track 8


burkina faso

surutu kunu - african percussion, track 4


senegal

thione diop - kham saa thiossane (one of the last tracks)
abdoulaye diakite & mamadou sidibe - jebebara: the bamana djembe, track 4
abdoulaye diakite & leon mobley - mandingo drumming (last track)
papa assane m'baye & tam tam magic - mame michelle lam, track 3

[Dugafola]

duga, why would the 3 dunun setup have the effect of making the rhythms more 'straight' ?
these days in bamako it's not at all uncommon to see that kind of setup.

i phrased it wrong...i meant to say that the style of music is straighter and the 3 dunun arrangements lends towards that.

thanks for the lecture.

[bubudi]

no worries duga, thanks for the sarcasm

but it still reads like you're saying that the 3 dunun setup lends itself to straighter playing. how so?

[jeffduyndam]

dugafola wrote,

Tambacounda Camp? moussa and abdoulaye? i think my wife was there dancing in that class.

Yes, it was at a Tambacounda Camp. The facilities were too close to some other campers or some residents nearby. The camp was only held there one year.

It was Moussa and another Senegalese. Actually a couple Senegalese guys. Can't remember their names. Definitely wasn't Abdoulaye. Abdoulaye was somewhere else at the end of the class...

[VagabonTribe]

Greetings everyone,
This is a good discussion, one which I have had with many people.

There is a lot of English terminology that does not always fit with discussions of African music. this will be a bit cumbersome so please hang in there.

Many Malian musicians reference music to certain rhythms in order to convey feeling. For example: a piece of music might have a certain "swing" to it (what we would identify as swing in western jazz) - this type of music is often referenced to Dansa and it's family of rhythms (4-4 time: but if we broke it down really they are playing in 12-8 because the off beats are placed closer to the up and down beats - implying a 12-8 feel, hence the 12-8 rolls that are so common in this family of music). But one instantly knows if they are feeling music in 4-4 or 12-8 because of how they play the hand patterns. Sunu is not a part of this family of music. It can be confusing because there is a lead phrase that accompanies a dansa dance step that is the same hand pattern as the Sunu accompaniment. o o . s s . b s o o . s s . b s (notated for Sunu as: the first tone being the 16th note preceding the "1" - this hand pattern is often played: r l . r l . l r r l . r l . l r but in Dana it is played: l r . r l . l r l r . r l ) Even though they are both common time (4-4) rhythms they have distinct feel differences. Most Guineans I have played with play sunu in a dansa feel - something many Malians recognize very quickly.

The fast part of Sunu is in 12-8 and rooted in African shortbell. We see that a 6-8 style accompaniment ( as opposed to the difinitive 12-8 accompaniment in Suku) is used (similar to Maraka - also rooted in African shortbell). Suku (often referred to as Soli) is rooted in a different family of 12-8 rhythms that would be associated with Manjani, the Dununba rhythms, Ferabanka, etc. Some other "swingy" 12-8 rhythms Gerankeh foly, Wolossodon (often attached to Dansa in many troupe arrangements), Numu foly, they reside in another sub-group that is often associated with rhythms in the same family as Suku (which in some instances can be an obvious association - but in others the assoc. seems very elusive).

I played with some people from Kayes and they showed me a number of hand-patterns that are associated with the Sunu feel - ways to develop the specific micro-timing that is necessary to play Sunu the way they do. The spacing of the 16th not subdivision is unlike any other rhythm I have played in Mali - it is not "straight" (even spacing), it is not "swung" (uneven spacing with a consistent 12-8 feel pattern) but it does have a definite pattern to it (the spacing of the 16th notes preceding the "1" and the "3" are definitely different than the other spacings and the "4-e-and" has a closer spacing than the rest of the notes in the measure).

Well, I hope this info was more helpful than confusing.

[michi]

That was definitely helpful, thanks!

Séga Sidibé in his book "Sega Kan Do" classifies rhythms into three groups:

• The Dansa family
• The Suku family
• The Demba Foly family

Dansa (obviously) belongs to the Dansa family. Sunu belongs to the Demba Foly family.

The rhythms of the Dansa family are binary rhythms that change the micro-timing such that pulse 2 is delayed slightly, and pulse 4 is advanced slightly; the rhythms of the Demba Foly family are ternary rhythms that delay pulse 2 slightly.

Here are the two relevant sections from the book:

IMAGE0001.pdf

Dansa family

(65 KiB) Downloaded 76 times

IMAGE0002.pdf

Demba Foly family

(81.89 KiB) Downloaded 68 times

Ignore the binary/ternary distinction and compare a the spacing of the micro-pulses when the patterns for each family are placed end-to-end: For the Dansa family, the middle pair of pulses in every group of four is compressed whereas, for the Demba Foly family, the first pulse in each group of four is spaced apart from the remaining three, and pulses 2-4 are equally spaced.

So, the overall micro-timing (and therefore, feel) of the two families is different.

Cheers,

Michi.

[bubudi]

The rhythms of the Dansa family are binary rhythms that change the micro-timing such that pulse 2 is delayed slightly, and pulse 4 is advanced slightly

not quite. both pulse 2 and 4 are delayed

[michi]

not quite. both pulse 2 and 4 are delayed

Touché!

Serves me right for posting articles when I'm jet-lagged…

Michi.

[wendy19]

Thanks for letting me know about other good stuff!

[Dugafola]

MK teaches the "mali" sunu now as well as his old arrangement.

[michi]

MK teaches the "mali" sunu now as well as his old arrangement.

How do the two differ? Does he change the feel, or the parts, or both? Would you have notation and/or recordings you could share?

Cheers,

Michi.

[Dugafola]

dununba is basically the same. kenkeni and sangban are different.

i have no notation. i can try..

kenkeni or sangban (depending on how it's arranged):

m xo o o xx o o

but it's fairly common on the mali recordings.

this is a close representation to the dunun parts only...but mk will keep his dununba (sangban in the video) and play the kenkeni part in the video on the sangban. kenkeni will ride the pulse.

[michi]

Thanks for that!

So, listening to this and looking at your description, I came up with the notation below. Is that right?

Edited to fix incorrect postion of sangban mute after feedback from Jürgen.
—Michi

Sangban:

Code: Select all

1...2...3...4...
b.bb.b.b.bb.b.b.
c..o.o.o..c.o.o.


Dundunba:

Code: Select all

1...2...3...4...
b.bb.bb.b.b.b.bb
o.oo..c...c.c..o


Kenkeni:

Code: Select all

1...2...3...4...
b.b.b.b.b.b.b.b.
o...o...o...o...


Michi.

[Dugafola]

sure!!!

[michi]

I forgot to notate the sangban bell

I edited my post to add the bell pattern. This is only a guess, but it seems to be the logical bell to play.

Michi.