Drum Circle

In this lesson, we will cover the traditional African djembe rhythm called Sunu so that when you are out there doing drum circles and dance classes, you know exactly what you should be doing.



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As always, we recommend that if you have the opportunity to hook up with a djembe teacher, please do so. You can never replace a human being. It's the best thing and it is the tradition of how the art of playing the instrument has been taught through the ages.

Before, you may have seen some djembe demonstrations where I have been 'riffing'. In these demonstrations I was riffing on the clave of a particular rhythm.

What I want to do now is give you an idea of the rhythm itself and the djembe parts.

The rhythm we are going to do now is called Sunu. Sunu is a rhythm that traditionally was used for farmers in Guinea West Africa and also used with another rhythm called Djansa in terms of a contest. But here in America, we use it for a different purpose. Often times we see folks use the rhythm Sunu for funeral reasons as well as celebrations.

SUNU DJEMBE RHYTHM

The Break starts and stops the djembe rhythm and changes the dancers, so we start with the break.

[RHYTHM PERFORMED ON DRUM]

First djembe part

[RHYTHM PERFORMED ON DRUM]

Second djembe part

[RHYTHM PERFORMED ON DRUM]

Now when you hear Sunu played here in America you can hear it several different ways.

Some people play it this way:

[RHYTHM PERFORMED ON DRUM]

The other way, traditionally:

[RHYTHM PERFORMED ON DRUM]


Either way is fine. They are both right. One is American and the other is Continental. They are both right.

Now think about the parts that we just learned. I am going to riff a little bit including all of those different parts.

The drum used in this demonstration is the 10" Antique Chocolate Deep Carve Djembe.

Labels: Africa, African Rhythm, Dion Rivers, Djembe Lesson, Djembe.Rhythms, How to Play Djembe, Sunu