Djembe Expert Visits Middle School

Middle School students recently shared time in their music classes with a master djembe player of the Mandingue culture of West Africa.

 

Michael Taylor—who goes by “Taylor”—and music teacher Rob Denien met at Northwestern University. Denien was a student and Taylor a visiting musician sharing his craft as a Tam Tam Mandingue Djembe Academy Senior Certified Instructor and director of the Tam Tam Mandingue Djembe Academy, Chicago.

 

Since his students can’t sing in choirs or perform in bands this year due to pandemic restrictions, Denien looked to his past experience and relationship with percussion instruments to provide an inspiration for a unit of study. He decided to invite Taylor to serve as virtual performer in residence and provide students with a better appreciation of the djembe, in particular, and West African percussion, in general.

 

Before meeting Taylor, students had discovered and played with the drums that traditional ensembles use in modern-day Guinea. They played the djembe and dunun drums, including the kenkeni, sangban and dununba. In his gatherings with students, Taylor provided additional historical context, describing how the djembe first emerged in the West African Mali empire—in current-day areas of Guinea, Senegal and the Ivory Coast—in the mid-1300s, before any colonization. He pointed out the African continent’s tremendous diversity, encompassing more than 50 countries and thousands of ethnic groups with different languages, music and cultures. He then spoke about the history of Africa’s colonization, which countries colonized others and why.

 

Taylor continued with the origins of West African music and the importance of women in keeping the oral tradition alive by making music with their mouths and hands, singing about things that were important in their lives. He offered up a scenario in which the village blacksmiths—or Numun—might have carved out a log, stretched a hide over it and struck it to create a whole new instrument and sound. He asked his audience to imagine what it would be like to hear a sound you have never heard before, then make simple sounds more complex and, as time passes, create more than a beat—to, in fact, create a culture’s voice, spirit, history and music.

 

Sharing his personal experience, Taylor described his many years learning the oral history and technique to play djembe from globally renowned master drummer Mamady Keïta, founder of the Mandingue Djembe Academy. To maintain the integrity of these traditional rhythms, the name of a rhythm, where it is played and why it is played are all necessary parts of knowing and learning the music, he explained.

 

Taylor concluded his time with students by performing and demonstrating the way a single traditional rhythm is actually a dialogue among and between different instruments, then invited questions from students, which ranged from adornment on instruments to the djembe’s influence on contemporary music and beyond.

 

This experience with Taylor gave students more context and understanding to keep in mind while working with Denien to learn “Moribayassa,” a rhythm and song that originates from the Malinke ethnic group in Northeast Guinea, performed when a woman’s wish is granted.

 

More on Taylor is available here.

Click here for photos of this experience.