Lesson video

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Hello and welcome to lesson three of this West African Music unit.

My name is Mr. Chapman and in today's lesson, we will look at how drums are used to communicate in West Africa.

As well as explore the different textures used in West African music, including polyrhythms, and we will have a chance to create our own polyrhythms at the end of this lesson.

So like always, let's take a look at what we will need to be successful in this lesson.

In this lesson, you will need a pencil and a piece of paper to write notes with.

You will also need your body to make some body percussion sounds.

This lesson is better with headphones, though they are not required.

If you can, find a quiet space to do this lesson as you will be doing lots of listening and playing.

If you need to pause the video now to prepare for the lesson please do so, and click resume when you're ready.

To warm up, let's try and play some of Coque together.

I will play the start signal.

And we will both play the ostinato.

Let's play djembe.

When you hear me play the stop signal, remember to do the unison response.

Click, clap.

To ensure that we end at the same time.

Here we go.

If we ended at the same time, well done.

If you would like to do that again, rewind the video.

I'm going to hand over to my friend Mohamed.

Who will talk about different drums from West Africa.

Watch and listen to each video carefully and answer the questions on each slide.

Pause and rewind the video as you need to.

And how do you use Sabar drums in celebrations in the community as a Gueye? Um we use the instrument that we have, the Sabar, to celebrate the happy moments in our community.

For example, if there is a wedding, if there is a baptism, if there is a full moon come, or if we have a visitor come into visit us or we welcoming them with our instrument by singing, dancing and showing the positive energy that we have in West Africa.

And do you play different rhythms for different occasions? Yes yes yes, we do.

We for example if I want to If I want to let people know that there is someone who get married in the morning, early in the morning, I can let them know from the phrase that I play with my instrument.

I play the language of what that celebration is for.

So this is how also we do it.

So the Sabar drum can talk to people? Yeah, we use the Sabar to transmit the message from the village to another.

So, is all the instruments also so we using these to transmit the message.

Languages from where I come from we can play it in this instrument.

The Sabar drum is played in many celebrations and events.

List all the events that you hear in the video.

How is the Sabar drum used to communicate messages? Pause the video so you can write your answers down.

We have this instrument called dunun.

And dunun they are three, they are family of drum.

This one we call is dununba is the big one.

That one we call it sangban, and this one we call it kenkeni.

But mainly the sangban is everything on the rhythm that you play.

If you want to know which rhythm you play, you need to use this one is telling you we are playing this rhythm.

How do you normally play the dununs? How do I normally play the dunun? With a stick.

And normally we play it like that traditionally and you have to have a belt to use.

You see this belt.

So, if I'm going to play a.

Yeah, this is how we do it in traditional way.

So when you have the drum set up like this, does that mean you can play all of the parts at the same time with one person, instead of having one person on each drum? Yes, because if you put them like this style, it's the Ballet style.

What three people can do, you can do it.

But you need to understand the rhythm and what this instrument talking about and what that instrument talking about and this one what they talking about.

And you put them together as one person playing for what the three people can play.

What signal do we hear in this extract? And how does the size of each drum influence the pitch of the sound? Hello everyone, so here we have another instrument.

So, this one in Senegal we call it bongo.

I know they use a different instrument in England that we call that one bongo.

But in my country, this one we call it bongo.

And the bongo instrument here is a Calabash.

And here is a wood, but a very light wood that we have to put it on top of it.

And make a hole.

And these knots that you see they are metal also and here also.

All of these they have metal, then we fix it, we put it on to have different tunes.

Okay, so I am going to demonstrate a little bit about the bongo.

And sometimes when we play bongo, we can sing, and we can tell some story about something.

So that's a bongo in Senegal.

Thank you.

What materials are used in making the Senegalese bongo? How many different sounds does the instrument produce? How is the Senegalese bongo used to communicate? Pause the video here and answer the questions.

So what's this drum? This drum is a talking drum.

They're all talking drums, but this one we call it tama, tama.

What's it made of? Tama is made of with lizard's skin.

Both sides you can play any of them you prefer.

And we have the fishing line to show from the skin and this we call it the.

Okay, so in Senegalese.

This is a Senegalese instrument also tama.

And we have all of this rope from this is the starting, you go around.

And also it can mean the united.

Because all of this rope come from one way to the other and then this is the end then they hold on to each other.

When you playing it, you're pressing it the hole give you a sound.

So, as now the world we need united.

Let's play the tama for uniting.

Yeah, so I'm going to demonstrate about the Tama.

So, technically it's here.

When you press it, it give you a high sound.

When you loose it, it give you a low sound.

You see.

Yeah.

What materials are used in making the tama drum? Which West African country is the tama drum from? How do you change the pitch of the drum? And why do you think it's called the talking drum? Pause the video now and answer the questions on screen.

Texture in West African music.

Texture is an element of music that describes how the different layers of music interact.

Monophonic, a texture consisting of a solo musical line.

Homophonic, a texture based on chords that accompanies a distinct melody line.

Polyphonic, two or more melodies or parts that play at the same time, weaving in and out of each other.

Polyrhythms. Polyrhythms are created when two or more rhythms with different pulses are heard together.

I have highlighted a line on your screen.

The line represents any length of time.

I could divide this line to any number of parts.

But for this example, I have decided to divide it into four on top.

And three on the bottom.

So, we have equal four parts on the top and equal three beats on the bottom.

Playing these divisions at the same time would create a polyrhythm.

The rhythms contrast each other as they have a different pulse.

One four and one three.

These simultaneous contrasting rhythms are use frequently in West African music.

Let's take a listen.

So what does that sound like? Well, let me try and do both rhythms together for you.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three.

Together.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three.

One, two.

Oh! That's a bit like this, but with some practise we can all start to be able to play polyrhythms. Let's move on.

West African music is not usually notated.

But the polyrhythm may look like this in Western notation.

Notice how the beats are divided.

Drawing polyrhythms in a table can help us learn how to play them.

There is a little bit of math involved, but stay with me.

If I can do it, you can definitely do it.

My first polyrhythm is going to be three against four.

So I need to write a table that has three rows and four columns.

Y is our pulse.

So there are four beats in every bar.

I'm going to give you an opportunity to pause the video now and copy out the table you see on screen.

We have X or three rows of four.

Four beats in every bar.

Next, I'm going to colour every down beat or beat one.

I've chosen green for this example.

I will click with my left hand every down beat, like this.

One, two, three, four.

Easy so far, right? Now, I'm going to colour every three beats with a different colour.

We have to start at the same time so bar one is both in this case green and blue, but I've just changed it to yellow so it's easier to see.

So, one, two, three, colour on the four.

And then, one, two, three, colour on the three.

And then one, two, three, colour on the two.

And then one, two, we'd go back to the beginning to play bar one again.

Pause video here so you can catch up.

Okay, the time has come for us to try and put these together.

Now I understand that this is really difficult and it's going to be really hard at first.

But if we start slow and gradually get faster, we'll get there in the end.

My left hand is going to be clicking on the greens, and my right hand is going to be clicking on the blues.

Let's give it a go! Nice and slowly.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three.

Four, one, two.

Three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three.

Four, one, two.

Three, four.

One, two, three, four.

I'm going to play that at a quicker tempo now, so you can hear what it sounds like a little bit quicker.

If you think you can click along at home, then great.

If you just want to have a listen, equally fine.

Here we go! One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

I'm going to try and go even quicker.

Here it goes! There we go.

So that's the three against four polyrhythm.

I invite you now to pause the video here and study the table, practising it yourself at a tempo that suits you.

It can be super slow and that's okay.

Gradually get quicker and quicker and quicker and soon you'll be able to do it in your sleep.

Good luck! Here's another popular polyrhythm.

Used in many different types of music, including West African music.

It's called the three two, or the three against two polyrhtythm.

And it sounds like this.

One, two.

One, two, three.

One, two.

One, two, three.

One.

Slow it down, draw the table and see if you can practise that one to get it perfect as well.

Our next task is to draw a polyrhythm table for X equals four and Y equals three.

So we know that Y is our pulse, So if Y equals three then we have three beats in a bar.

X is how many rows we have.

So to help you, I put the table on the screen.

Now you can colour it appropriately so we can show which hand clicks on which beat.

Hopefully, you got something a little bit like this.

If you haven't already, have a go and try to play this polyrhythm now.

I've finished the video