The music in Lara McIntosh’s Sunday-morning Wassa Dance class has been really hot lately. This morning, though,Thierno Diop took it up a notch with some of the wildest djembe phrasing I’ve ever heard.
It was improv as always. I was playing a modified Soli Rapide sangban part on my dununba and kenkeni:
1 * * 2 * * 3 * * 4 * * x . x . x x . x . x . x D . . . K K . . . D . .
Caxambu was playing a goat-skin atabaque, Mohammed was playing what looked like some sort of kpanlogo drum, and Naby was playing Thierno’s bougarabous.
I’m not entirely sure what he was doing, but it sounded like Thierno was playing in roughly 4/4 time with a heavy sabar/mbalax flavor and emphasizing the sixteenth notes just before and after the beat. Whatever he was doing, it was some of the coolest damned drumming I’ve ever heard. I wish I’d had my minidisc recorder running. . .
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