Do you speak djembe?

[the kid]

In Fairness some of the Ballets are great theatre. The re-enactment of the malinke epics/stories is really cool. Sure todays ballets aren't as culturally significent but it's still a lot better than M Flatelys mullet prancing around.

[Michel]

I think Irish dance won in popularity after riverdance, and I think that djembe wasn't as popular as it is now without the ballets. But people who get to know those things have to take some effort to discover the traditional world behind the more commercial forms of performance.

[bkidd]

Michel wrote:
I think Irish dance won in popularity after riverdance, and I think that djembe wasn't as popular as it is now without the ballets.

Agreed, a much broader audience was exposed to a the djembe through the Ballets and the tours they went on. Djembe wouldn't be as popular today without this international exposure and the subsequent efforts of djembefolas coming out of these early Ballets to teach/share their instruments and culture abroad.

[michi]

Michel wrote:
I think Irish dance won in popularity after riverdance, and I think that djembe wasn't as popular as it is now without the ballets.

Agreed, a much broader audience was exposed to a the djembe through the Ballets and the tours they went on. Djembe wouldn't be as popular today without this international exposure and the subsequent efforts of djembefolas coming out of these early Ballets to teach/share their instruments and culture abroad.

Yes, that seems certain. And, if you want to look for the most significant single cause of the rise in popularity of the djembe in the nineties, I think it would have to be the Djembefola documentary. That movie made a deep impression on a lot of people.

Michi.

[Paul]

Looks like corporate teambuilding stuff, its work, I did it lots (though mainly with samba)...
Even mamady has 'sewa beats' (who do massive things like this) and I would say a large amount of percussionists do things like this to pay the bills... It's a short video so it's hard to tell, then again you put your best foot forward when you make vid (well the editor does)...

Comparing riverdance to djembe now thats just wrong (though i think they used a djembe)...
Never saw it anyway.....

What about the performance?? If you get a gig do you do a background check to make sure the people employing you are legit, if not are you not damaging the tradition, or can you do a McDonalds commercial s long as its technicaly pure tradition your playing....

[e2c]

michi - I don't know about that (the film).

If anything, Remo's mass production of their "djembes" and the use of these drums (and African djembes, too) in drum circles + endorsements from people like Arthur Hull are what spread the "commercial" use of djembe in the US. You can see/hear it in a lot of alt-popular music made in the US from the early 90s on.

The fact that I could not find a teacher who actually knew both trad and ballet versions of the music until the mid-00s is more reflective of what has been going on here (imo) than anything to do with the docu or people teaching. Back in the late 80s and on into the 90s, I looked for a djembe teacher who knew what they were doing (in a major city) and could not find one. There were isolated African dance/drum groups, and then there was a combination of New Age/hippie/pagan/whatever folks who were playing the instrument without knowing its roots, plus musicians who were adding djembes to their kit to give more of a "world" flavor to their performances.

*

Very much agreed with Paul above re. people needing to get gigs to pay the bills, which is one of the big reasons that I have no problem with folks doing shows like the one shown in the video. Also, I think he is right in saying that this video likely does *not* give an accurate impression of the gigs this crew plays.

[bkidd]

Arthur Hall certainly had a big influence around people in the Santa Cruz and Bay Area.

e2c wrote:
There were isolated African dance/drum groups, and then there was a combination of New Age/hippie/pagan/whatever folks who were playing the instrument without knowing its roots, plus musicians who were adding djembes to their kit to give more of a "world" flavor to their performances.

This is still true today. It's not that one movement has taken over, but rather many groups are still in existence, satisfying various niches in the musical market.

-Brian

[michi]

If anything, Remo's mass production of their "djembes" and the use of these drums (and African djembes, too) in drum circles + endorsements from people like Arthur Hull are what spread the "commercial" use of djembe in the US.

Isn't that back to front? I mean, a manufacturer normally doesn't go "Let's make a lot of djembes so lots of people will buy them." Instead, it's much more likely the other way round: "Man, there are more and more people playing djembes. We should sell some too, otherwise we miss out on our slice of the pie."

I think the drum circle culture was probable quite well established long before the rise of the djembe in the west. I remember seeing drum circles of a sort as a child in the sixties, only they had bongos as well as other drums, but no djembes. There certainly was already quite a bit of fertile ground for the djembe to flourish in once it crossed the threshold of awareness in the west.

I'm sure that the ballet tours were also a contributor. But they were touring in the seventies and eighties too, but the explosion of the djembe as a popular instrument didn't really happen until the early nineties, as far as I know.

Cheers,

Michi.

[e2c]

I think there's a difference between "drum circle culture" and what you're talking about, michi, in the US, at least. Not that the two haven't had points of convergence!

Drum circles started becoming popular on the East Coast in the late 1980s. Some of them came out of Robert Bly (et. al.'s) "men's movement" (I've met more than a few people who either 1st encountered the djembe through this, or have been involved in leading drumming sessions at gatherings, or both).

*That's* who Remo was targeting with their drums, I think... along with schools.

Darboukas seemed to be the Deadhead drum of choice during the late 80s and I worked in a place that sold lots of them for that reason - it was fashionable, it was "the new bongo" (per one of my co-workers, who was a Deadhead himself). Then djembe gained in popularity.

I rarely saw people bringing djembes to drum circles in the D.C. area when I was going to them circa 1989-ish. Most people who wanted large drums brought congas; most others had darboukas.

fwiw, anyway!

Edited to add: Remo didn't start making their truly horrible "dumbeks" until after the instrument had become popular; ditto for bodhrans and other frame drums. They are behind the curve, not ahead of it, but they make out quite well, since most of their sales are institutional - to schools.

[Paul]

They should have got this guy in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... ki-Jac8H0#!

[Paul]

Here is another video.. It gives Sewa beats as the contact so it's probably signed off by the big man..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... jkWaMJjVOM

[e2c]

Here is another video.. It gives Sewa beats as the contact so it's probably signed off by the big man..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... jkWaMJjVOM

They say so, here: http://www.sewabeats.com/en/index.php/our-patron

[Afoba]

from that site: "Guardian of the Malinké tradition"

[Michel]

Also from that site:

[James]

An interview with some of the people behind this (it's in French though)