Djembe Music Syntax - Part I

14/August/2011 free lessons | music

Famoudou KONATE and Sekou CONDE, Hamana - Guinea - 2007

One of the most attractive factors concerning african percussion music is the level of interaction between polyrhythm, voice of the soloist and dance. The french illusionist Gérard Majax used to say about magic tricks: "If it's magic it's extraordinary, but if it's not, admit that it's even more extraordinary." Interaction in djembe music is possible because there is a "trick", more technically speaking, a syntax that is used by those involved, to communicate with each other by sound.

In general the play space is a cycle of two measures.

The play space.

The four fundamental signals

Being both a conductor and an accompanist, the djembe soloist plays, whenever necessary, musical signals that establish the form and allow all players to stay connected and know what they have to do, depending the type of signal. The call is equivalent to the count-off in western music. It lasts one measure and leads to the first occurence of the play space.

The call.

The stop signal enjoins to end the reproduction of the play space on the first beat of the following measure.

The stop signal.

The change signal invites dancers to change their movment (constantly used in african dance classes). It lasts one measure and should be played on the second measure of play space to allow changes to start at the beginning of play space.

The change signal.

The conclusion signal enjoins dancers to conclude a part of their improvisation and/or inform the band and audience the soloist is concluding a part of improvisation (personal or collective). The conclusion signal lasts one measure followed by one rest/transition measure. From a theoretical point of view it may help to consider those two measures being outside of the play space. The rest/transition measure leads back to the play space.

The conclusion signal.

Notes

This is how native players name the terms explained above, in french:

play space: le rythme.
call: l’ appel.
stop: le blocage.
change: le signal.
conclusion: le signal, le blocage.

One of the most common source of confusion for non-native djembe players is that Africans sometimes use interchangeably the terms "signal" and "blocage" to refer to the change, conclusion and stop signals.

It seems the call signal is more used in urban djembe styles than in the villages where rhythms can be called by a song or built gradually, each part entering freely.

Some sequence-based rhythms such as Takosaba or Bolo Konondo have a slightly different operating because of their asymmetric structures.

The light of creative flow often hides these structural elements to novice ears, especially with brilliant players who juggle with them:

Blowing during rest measures.
Starting signals before the first beat.
Doubling conclusion and rest measures.
Playing single patterns which occur on a different place at each measure eventually making the listener being lost somewhere in the play space.

Those kind of dazzling factors make many people think there are no rules behind the magic of djembe music.

Practice without counting (literally and figuratively). You don’t want to spend your musical practice time counting numbers. Begin slowly and find your way to internalize those rules. Easy to say, not so easy at the beginning but so magic when you got it !