Larry Swanson’s Blog

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. . .

I played dununs with Naby’s band Lagni Sussu at Hidmo last night. It was a very fun gig, one of those nights where pretty much everyone in the place was up dancing.

As is often the case with Naby, it was a bit of a pick-up band, with Etienne Cakpo, Souleymane N’Daiye, and me (if you know these guys, you know that mentioning me in the same sentence is pretty much blasphemy; they’re real-deal, lifelong musicians, while I’m a dilettante late-comer) sitting in on percussion along with Eduard Souarez on drum kit and Mohammed Shaibu on guitar - and Naby on balafon and djembe, of course.

The highlight of the evening for me was having Sawe Imani come up and paste a dollar bill on my forehead and give me a big hug as I was playing. Sawe is one of my favorite dancers and dance teachers, and it means a lot to me that she appreciates my music. I started developing my chops several years ago playing for her Wednesday-night class at Spectrum, and I appreciate her patience (and that of Carold, Thaddeus, Ryan, and the other drummers) as I developed my drumming skills.

Naby is alway showing me cool dunun phrases. This one really seemed to get the dancers going (ballet style; D = dununba, K = kenkeni, actually a kenkeni/sangban flam):

1 * + * 2 * + * 3 * + * 4 * + *
D . D D . . K . . . . . . . K .

(If you can’t read this notation, drop me a note and I’ll explain it in more detail.)