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hey,
does anyone have any experience with the rhythm Taama? it's guinean. I just did a four-hour workshop with Famoudou Konate that was all about Taama and I've only partly got it -- it's a mind-bender. I'd love to see notation if anyone has it... or just to hear about your experiences with it.
does anyone have any experience with the rhythm Taama? it's guinean. I just did a four-hour workshop with Famoudou Konate that was all about Taama and I've only partly got it -- it's a mind-bender. I'd love to see notation if anyone has it... or just to hear about your experiences with it.
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Toronto
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Re: taama
Tue, June 27, 2006 - 9:25 AMI think thats the dununba and what makes it tricky is that is has 3 triple bell hits in the sangban part. and the dununba is all on the upbeats. I dont play that one enough, not enough people know it and I'm shaky on holding the sangban.
Did you take Famoudou's workshop here in the US? I am going to Boise to take his class for 3 days in mid July. I was wondering if he teaches the same rhythms in each city or if there is some variation? What did he teach when you took his class?
I think Taama is on Mamady's Hammanah CD and on Famoudou's "Vol #2" CD. I'm leaving town tonight but send me a mailing address and I will send you a copy of one transcription of it that I have. I will bring it and compare it to what famoudou teaches at the boise class. Also check the WAP -west african percussion pages for some transcription. -
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Re: taama
Tue, June 27, 2006 - 12:38 PMthanks, dlf -- I'll PM you with details.
no, Famoudou was just here in Toronto for four days. I only did one day and we did Taama for most of the four hours, and then something else that I didn't really get for the other chunk of time -- I kind of wished we'd stayed with the first one. he's an intense teacher. you're right, the dununba part is all on the upbeats and that's why it's such a crazy-maker, I think, because intuitively it seems like the deepest bass should be marking the one. but, no-no.
I'll do a search for WAP, too -- haven't found that one yet. (till recently I've been pretty immersed in cow-skin-drum world -- am just starting to sink deeper into the west african drumming world... it's wild.) -
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Re: taama
Tue, June 27, 2006 - 12:43 PM
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Re: taama
Mon, July 3, 2006 - 11:57 AMi just did the portland workshop and he taught:
tunkan, fe don, muso kenya, mendiani, koro(dununba), taama(dununba), soma senki(dununba) and karan foli
fammy is good shit man.
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Re: taama
Tue, June 27, 2006 - 5:38 PMI'll give you all a big tip to help you understand the music you are playing. Each individual instrument has its duty. When learning, play the part on the pulse. When joining the next part play it on the same pulse. There is no up or down beat, thats western thought. You just focus on where your voice begins in the invisible time line (pulse). The parts will speak the language if you are correct. Put your attention to what the particular instruments are saying. Don't worry about the bell, the bell parts are created by the person teaching. Just find one that fits. Just practice dun by itself and learn the languge. When you know that, learn how it sings in the choir with rest. You'll get it because your tring. -
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Re: taama
Sat, July 1, 2006 - 2:27 AMHmm, interesting comments about pulse & up/downbeat or lack thereof... In my western-inculcated feeling of rhythm, the downbeat--the One--is so crucial to my understanding of music. Sometimes that seems helpful, but sometimes (especially with Dununba rhythms) it creates problems for me. If I play the Dununba kenkeni part & feel it as downbeat it seems very simple; if I play it & try to feel it as upbeat, it seems much more difficult. It still challenges me after several years. But in my experience with African drummers, their feeling of rhythms seems totally different--it doesn't seem to matter to them whether something is a "downbeat" or "upbeat". It's all just part of a conversation & they seem to simply feel where this part fits in relation to that part.
Still, all the dance & song happens in relationship to what we might call a "downbeat," and of course, all breaks/signals called by lead djembe player. So it's not a meaningless construct. But still, overreliance on feeling a "downbeat" can cause difficulties, especially when trying to learn Dununba rhythms (where kenkeni is always on "upbeat" & most of the dununba parts are as well). Listening to Mamady Keita's "Hamana" used to drive me crazy, because I would always feel the rhythms wrong (with kenkeni marking downbeat). I had to put it away for a few years because I was afraid of permanently embedding these rhythms in my brain/body in the wrong way. I had to very clearly understand the conversation of the different parts before I would feel the rhythms correctly, & even still they would still sometimes "flip" over in my mind...
So, Christoph, are you saying that when first learning a part, it's not essential whether you feel it on downbeat or upbeat, but simply learn it within its own "pulse" & learn its relationship to other parts? -
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Re: taama
Sat, July 1, 2006 - 7:21 AMI think "when first" is the key phrase here.
when I was learning taama with Famoudou, I learned the sangban part simply because it's so cool and the sangban players were really banging it out LOUD. but I learned it in the wrong spot -- meaning, on the downbeat rather than the upbeat. I was able to make a pretty smooth transition to putting in the right place once I listened more closely to the recording, but yeah... for me, calling it the upbeat/downbeat and *feeling* it as such is highly important -- again, with my also-western-inculcated feeling of rhythm, just like LanSing. even Famoudou himself, although he never used the words downbeat and upbeat, he sure used those bells on his ankles to mark the downbeat, and kept bringing us back to the shard of liferaft in the crazy taama ocean -- the one djembe part that falls where you think it probably falls.
so, I don't agree that downbeat and upbeat knowledge aren't important -- I think it's good to have them in the back of one's mind when learning any part -- but I do agree that even if you learn it "wrong," as long as the spacing between strokes and the strokes themselves are accurate, it can be shifted a degree or two to the left or right. -
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Re: taama
Wed, July 5, 2006 - 2:45 AMI'm not so sure. For example, as I said, playing the Dununba kenkeni while feeling it on the downbeat is a snap for me. But the fact I can play that doesn't make it easy to "shift it a degree or two to the left or right" to feel it on the upbeats. It's that very shift that makes everything go all haywire, at least for me.
As another (similar) example, I imagine most of us have no trouble playing the typical "slap-(space)-tone-slap" figure typical of most Malinke 6/8 rhythms, starting on the downbeat. And many of us have become comfortable playing it starting on the third eighth-note of the measure (similar to Dununba kenkeni), since that is another common part. (Fourth is also easy because that still puts the slaps on "downbeats", but flipped.) But can you play it equally well feeling it starting on the *second* eighth-note? Or the fifth, or sixth? I know trying to feel this very simple figure in those alternate places messes with my whole kinesthetic sense of how I feel rhythm.
Maybe this is easier for people who are not as "downbeat-dependent" as I am, but I know the (theoretically simple) shift you describe creates big problems for me, which is why I find this topic fascinating.... -
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Re: taama
Wed, July 5, 2006 - 9:13 AMI know what you mean; it can take a while to feel it. and everyone learns/feels these things differently. some of my students don't get the rhythm until I take their hands and "puppeteer" play it for them; others need me to count, or to play it so they can see what I'm doing, and others just need to close their eyes and listen. I'm the weird kind of student who learns something instantly and then loses it completely four minutes later, then gets it, then completely loses it again.
all this to illustrate the point that we all have funny peaks and valleys in our brains and bodies and the rhythms settle in differently according to those.
I guess all I'm saying is that at least in my particular brain-body setup, if I learn a rhythm in the wrong place, it's not like my efforts learning it were all in vain. although yes, it may take me, and you, a while to feel the weird-ass *right* place where it belongs (like, hours -- for real), once I can feel that place kinesthetically, I can drop the previously-learned part into it as an entire unit.
most times. ;)
this is totally the sort of thing we need drums and to be in the same room, not virtual room, for. I like your challenge of "can you play that starting on the second eighth note?, or the fifth or sixth?" sounds like advanced class material -- I love that feeling of being messed up by timing, because I know that once I get it, it'll feel all that much better!
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Re: taama
Thu, July 20, 2006 - 11:41 AMI think you are getting what I'm saying. Each drum is a voice, the phrases (voices) put together in diffrent spots make a sentence. Just learn the sentence and you can figure the individual placings of each drum (voice). In the village I never knew up or down. I felt one pusle and learned the sentence the individual drums were saying. I see many students rely on counting and that puts them close to the real sound somtimes but, more often than not it sounds very western and not to the liking of my ears. kekenni talks opposite of djembe, that pretty much sums up how I know to do it.
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