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A Musical Instrument Travels Around the World: Jenbe Playing in Bamako, West Africa, and Beyond
Abstract and Figures
Jenbe drum ensemble music has appeared in a variety of contexts, namely in local family and communal celebrations, at state-organized folklore ensembles in West Africa, and as West African percussion music in the industrialized countries. These contexts of jenbe playing emerged one after the other, partly developing out of one another. However, they did not supersede each other nor leave the other contexts unaffected. This article studies the reciprocal effects of local, national, and international utilization of the jenbe, illustrated by changes in instrument-making in Bamako, the capital of the Republic of Mali. It argues that only the feedback of local, national, and international jenbe playing has allowed its artistic and professional vitality in urban West Africa to grow.
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... Se centra la atención en el ensamble de percusiones donde destaca el tambor djembé y dundunes, instrumentos con los que se tocan ritmos y danzas tradicionales de origen Malinké y Susu (subgrupos etnolingüísticos mandinga localizados en el área costera del área que actualmente comprende la República de Guinea-Conakry). Los ritmos de estos pueblos han sido internacionalizados y convertidos en el principal portador de conocimiento musical acerca del África Occidental para el resto del mundo (Flaig, 2010;Polak, 2000;. En este sentido, se ofrece una interpretación sobre cuáles son las particularidades de los ensambles que reproducen lo que se considera un estilo afro en torno a la danza y la percusión, sobre qué factores locales coadyuvan a su desarrollo, y sobre el sentido que adquiere el aprendizaje de este tipo de música entre las juventudes urbanas; seguir el significado y la evolución de la música africana y ayudar a aclarar las marcadas diferencias entre los valores -de uso y de cambio-de la música africana con respecto a los de la sociedad occidental. ...
... Muchos ritmos tradicionales han sido reinterpretados y asimilados dentro de los contextos modernos en los que se desarrolla la vida urbana. Danzas tradicionales como Dundumba (en malinke, danza de los hombres fuertes), Mendiani (danza de iniciación ceremonial) o Kuku (danza de las cosechas o de los pescadores) son requeridas para las fiestas en los barrios populares de Conakry, la capital de Guinea (Castellanos, 2010) al igual que en Bamako, capital de Mali (Polak, 2000). Así mismo, ser percusionista del ensamble de djembé y dundun devino en lo que podría considerarse una "profesión liberal", esto es, un oficio común entre la población de origen mandinga de ciudades capitales, tales como Conakry, Bamako, Abdijan, Dakar y Bobo Dioulasso (Flaig, 2010, p. 20). ...
... En este rubro, debe destacarse la emergencia de "círculos de percusión" (conocidos como drum circles) en ciudades norteamericanas como San Diego, Nueva York, Toronto y Montreal (Flaig, 2010;Kelley, 2014;Mekouria, 2006;Provost, 2016;Templeton, 2012), en Francia (Kokelaere y Saïdani, 1997;Zanetti, 1999) y Alemania (Polak, 2000); o sea, ensambles de músicos no africanos. Los drum circles son mencionados como los primeros espacios para la difusión y aprendizaje de la cultura musical mandinga e iniciaron, según los autores recién citados, a nivel "no-oficial", a través de redes (no estrictamente comerciales) que permitieron vincular a profesores de música, aficionados y tiendas de tambores del mundo occidental con percusionistas, bailarines y artesanos africanos, dando como resultado la industria cultural del djembé que existe en la actualidad. ...
Análisis centrado en la atención de las prácticas sociales y su reciprocidad con las instituciones, bajo una conciencia sociológica que se percata de los alcances que tiene un fenómeno social cuando se razona en su dinámica y no en los modelos estáticos de análisis. Examinar los capítulos de este texto bajo esta conciencia permite observar las modificaciones de las instituciones en el contexto del noroeste mexicano como una realidad común.
La disertación sobre el actor/sistema y las diferentes teorías sociológicas son referentes de los textos que integran el libro y brindan el corolario sobre las formas emergentes de realidades múltiples y actores en contextos específicos.
... To these ends, the choice of instrumentation fell on a pair of Djembe drums. Djembe is a hand percussion acoustic instrument of west-african origin and an instrument which is typically used in the context of ensemble playing [34], [35]. Typical Djembe music is performed in ensembles that vary by region and context. ...
Achieving synchronicity and tempo stability during a Network Music Performance (NMP) is not straightforward under heavy network latency conditions. Previous work on Global Metronomes has shown that it is possible to provide a universal time-reference signal to the connected nodes of an NMP. This paper illustrates the effects of using a global metronome and signal source-panning on a rhythmic performance. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the objective musical outcome and the subjective impressions of using these elements, applied to several pairs of Djembe percussion duets, under different tempo and latency conditions. The objective analysis in terms of tempo stability and synchrony, conducted from the perspective of an hypothetical audience, suggest that the use of a metronome achieves stability improvements at medium and higher latency levels, while the use of signal panning has been effective in improving the metronome efficiency. Subjective analysis data shows that the use of the metronome becomes challenging for higher delays while it was perceptually non-intrusive for the musicians for lower and medium delays.
... Sekou Toure, the first president of Guinea, has been credited with initiating the Western interest in djembe drumming (Charry, 1996;Flaig, 2010). Toure used djembe drumming styles from diverse groups within the newly founded country to create a national ballet and drumming group that led to international acclaim and interest (Charry, 1996;Flaig, 2010;Polak, 2005). ...
INTRODUCTION: Western conceptualisations of social work are increasingly interestedin practices considered to be alternative or non-traditional to respond to oppression. While incorporating alternative methods into social work is frequently viewed as unproblematic, we suggest critical reflection is necessary to safeguard against inadvertent, culturally unsafe practice and the uncritical re-inscription of individualised solutions.APPROACH: In this article, we explore the application of group drumming practices within social work through examination of a critical incident. While the benefits of group drumming are well documented, we use critical reflection to explore ethical challenges of incorporating group drumming practices into social work.CONCLUSIONS: We highlight strategies for social workers using alternative or non- traditional practices that support cultural humility and critical practice goals. This research holds implications for social workers interested in the potential of alternative practices while remaining committed to critical practice and cultural safety.
This paper focuses on the jembe (djembé) as a symbol of Africanness in contemporary Serbian culture. Players’ narratives often underline the universality and spirituality of distant, romanticised Africa linking these supposed features to ‘archaic’ aspects of Serbian and Balkan traditional music. The trope of universally adaptable rhythm has united different players, from pioneers of cross-cultural sound during late Yugoslav socialism to the proponents of present-day multiculturalism in Serbia. This paper is informed by ethnographic research with the group Đembija, a recent Belgrade-based music project, and by the use and discourse surrounding the jembe and other African instruments by other contemporary Serbian musicians. The jembe's use in world music bands serves as the basis for a diversity of ideological, poetic and musical practices. Simultaneously, the aural learning, small scale and ‘slow pace’ of musicianship, in contrast to the hectic everyday experience of contemporary capitalist society, acquires nostalgic resonances within Serbia’s budding cross-cultural jembe playing practices.
The ubiquity of the jembe in western and northern Europe, as well as in North America, was instigated during the 1970s by influential West African jembe players, later developing within world music, where this drum came to represent the essence of ‘African music’. In Croatia the popularity of the jembe did not arise until the late 1990s, motivated by local Croatian musicians who shaped an African music scene in Zagreb. More than a decade later, the first performers from West Africa—specifically from Senegal—settled in Croatia and claimed a space in the limited scene that had mainly crystallised around the jembe. Albeit within a climate of open collaboration, frictions emerged between these two groups of jembe performers surrounding issues of authenticity and labour. This article focuses on the initial phases and issues at stake in this encounter between Croatian and Senegalese jembe practitioners. Although these tensions resonate with exoticising discourses and notions of appropriation that have often characterised the world music industry, it is argued that generalising interpretations as well as the actors’ subjective readings must be deconstructed in order to grasp the complexities of this encounter and the processes shaping the African music scene in Zagreb.
This article provides an overview of the appropriations of Guinean folklore related to the emergence of an afromestiza identity in Mexico. It also analyzes the role played by Guinean performers and instructors living in Mexico and teaching West African dances and music. By gathering participant observation notes and conducting ethnographic interviews, the paper builds up an interpreting path to better understand the global circulation of traditions and their resigni cation by local and indigenous players. Several contradictions arise between the community practicing dance and percussion in Guinea and the role of instructors as professionals or cultural specialists, conceived as critical agents in channeling musical heritage of the population in a global scenario.
Music-dance genres are not necessarily bound to a particular place, especially with
regards to their contemporary practice. They do, however, often have a (real or constructed) place, region or culture of “origin” that is associated with the historical development of the genre. In the course of migrations and the circulation of music-dance
genres over time and space, the relationship between music and dance may change
profoundly. This article investigates processes of separation of dance and music from
a choreomusical point of view. By comparing various case studies, we attempt to outline
general patterns of the effects of translocalisation on the relationship between music and dance, putting emphasis on the influence of contexts of migration and diaspora,
adaptation and appropriation, forms of transmission, and economic factors.
Theorising the relationship between music and affect is nothing new; scholars have long engaged the ways music expresses and influences emotions and bodily intensities. Why is it, then, that (ethno)musicologists now find themselves following rather than leading a theoretical debate that adopts so many concepts we have used for generations: intensity, embodiment, performance, resonance? This Special Issue will draw on (ethno)musicological literature that anticipated the contemporary resurgence of affect theory, and also call for an intervention in which fine-grained, ethnographically informed analysis can newly invigorate theories about the inbetweenness and intensity of encounter. The interpositions we propose centre on three ethnomusicological concepts that complicate, nuance, and refine affect theory: interpretation, resonance, and embodiment. The introduction will explicate these theoretical propositions, and the following articles will ground those concepts in fieldwork and musical particulars. The broad-ranging articles will discuss electronic dance music in Berlin, nineteenth-century operatic voices in the USA, tambura music in the USA, and musical experiences of grief. These studies will investigate and critique both affect theory and ethnomusicological methods and analysis.
This article studies the empirical structures and theoretical status of rhythmic feels in jembe music, which is a popular style of drum ensemble music from West Africa. The focus is on systematic variations of durations (Bengtsson 1975)—that is, cyclic patterns of non-isochronous pulse streaming at the metric level of beat subdivision. Taking for example a standard piece of jembe repertoire that is set in a 4-beat/12-subpulse metric cycle (often notated as 12/8), I show that the ternary beat subdivision forms a repeated sequence of unequal (short, flexible, and long) subpulses. This stable rhythmic feel pattern, SFL, is unmistakable and non-interchangeable with a second ternary pattern, which is characterized by long, flexible, flexible subpulses (LFF) and occurs in other pieces of jembe music. As predicted in Justin London’s “hypothesis of many meters” (London 2004), these timing patterns distinguish individual meters. I further analyze how schemes of binary and ternary beat subdivisions can be synchronized to operate in parallel. Such metric nesting is based on the patterned non-isochrony of rhythmic feels. Cyclic variation of subpulse durations, I argue, is inherent in the repertoire and fundamental to the metric system of jembe music.
Resume Cet article porte sur la dynamique des traditions orales du monde mande. En meme temps que se transforment les surfaces sociales de l'information emerge un champ artistique original et riche. Les nouvelles stars et les griots produisent des textes a la mesure des changements qui s'operent. Les patrons actuels, au nom de leur recent statut, suscitent de nouvelles compositions. Le champ d'investigation s'appuie sur ces fonctions sociales emergentes, promues par l'Etat malien, par l'Etat colonial, ou meme plus tot, et sur les medias qui forgent un univers nouveau. En meme temps que les non-griots accedent a la scene, les femmes appartenant au monde des gens de la parole entrent en competition avec leurs confreres qui ne sont plus, bien souvent, que des auxiliaires. En revanche, les hommes non-griots controlent le monde du spectacle. L'aire mande a coutume de ce genre de bouleversement. L'histoire est recyclee comme elle l'a toujours ete, compte tenu de regles de composition qui sont loin d'etre figees. On n'en est pas au stade de la libre invention par tous et par chacun.
As the social surfaces of information are changing, an original, fertile artistic field is emerging in the Manding world. New stars and bards (griots) are producing texts in tune with the changes under way. This investigation is based on emerging social functions (promoted by the Malian government - if not already by colonial authorities, or even earlier) and on the media that are forging a new universe. As nonbards gain access to the stage, women come into competition with men who often play little more than second role. However men who are not bards control show business. The Manding cultural zone is used to this sort of change. History is being recycled as it has always been, given that the rules of composition are far from fixed.