Tone, Base, Slap

We’ve been trying to avoid some of the cheesiest tourist traps in West Africa – we’ve scoffed at backpackers with braids, we have not purchased African pajamas, and when rasta dudes approach us for drumming lessons, we’ve demurred.  This last one was the hardest, as Sara has been trying her hand at djembe for the past year, and when we made our African Bucket List, “take drumming lessons in Africa” was at the top.   Julienne, on the other hand, begged complete exemption from this item.  

While drumming seemed to be everywhere in West Africa, we couldn’t find a master drummer anywhere to show us the ropes. As we neared our last few weeks, we started to think that a drumming lesson just wasn’t going to happen.  So when a week before leaving, we had the chance to spend an hour with Antoinette Kudoto, Ghana’s first and only female master drummer in her small shop in Cape Coast, we said boom boom pow.

Antoinette started with the basics:

Begin with a SLAP

“You make the slap sound just like when you slap someone. Haven’t you ever slapped someone?  I’ve slapped plenty.”  Antoinette started drumming at age 13 when she was selected to play the djembe at St. Monica’s Girls’ School.  Traditionally played by men, it was the experience of attending a single-gender school that allowed Antoinette access to the drum, when otherwise she would have been selected to dance.  For the next twenty five years Antoinette cultivated her talent – at times at odds with her family and traditional community over it.  Only when we asked did Antoinette talk about how hard she fought to be the drummer she is today.  Today she performs extensively as a drummer and instructor across Africa, Europe and the US, including teaching at universities in California and Michigan.  We think that’s called the smack down.

Add the music of the TONE

The tone of the drum has certainly been the steady background rhythm to our time in Africa, and as Antoinette said “it’s the talking drum that commands people to move.”  One evening in our backyard in Dakar we heard drums playing nearby and we walked in our neighborhood until we found the three teenage drummers offering a laid-back street performance.  In Northern Ghana we saw large drums being made by hand, and there were plenty of thin goat-skin drums available for purchase in Mali and Burkina.  Youssour N’Dor had no fewer than six drummers on stage with him getting the whole crowd dancing. It’s the sound of these talking drums that communicates feeling and energy and pretty important cultural stories. Just as we’ve experienced with the multitude of local dialects in each country, the drum also has its own language in each town.  Antoinette taught us a three-part rhythm from Gambia.

 

Stay centered with the BASE

The big base beat of the drum comes right from the center -- one open hand thudding and bouncing up from the very middle.  As easily recognizable as the loud sound emanating from the center of the drum, every single person that we met in Cape Coast knew Antoinette and her shop.  They knew the group of young people that she is teaching traditional drumming and dance in the shadow of the slave castle.  Women knew to come by the shop to listen in to our lessons (and cluck their tongues when we missed the beat). Even the Chief knows that Antoinette’s shop is the place for him to stock up on hand-carved lutes.  Like the easy base beat, far away from the fight of the slap, Antoinette is now at the heart of the community.

The kicker of our time with Antoinette is that every time we played part of the rhythm, whether we got it wrong or we landed right on beat, she ended each segment by saying “I thank you for that!”  Antoinette was the teacher, but she was thanking us as students for wanting to learn and supporting her in teaching.   

And that is called the Grace note.