(drum music)
(audience applause)
Thank you very much.
I want to thank Lawrence Duncan, Michael Marsolek
and Tracey Todd for helping me out tonight.
How are you all doing?
(cheering)
What a fantastic evening!
That rhythm you just heard us play is called Maraka,
from the Maraka people of Mali, West Africa.
It's a wedding rhythm, a celebration rhythm.
The drums we're playing are of two basic types,
the double sided djun djun drum,
which gets its name from the sound it makes,
(drum sound effects)
(drum music)
And the drum I'm holding here called the djembe drum.
Now the Bambara people of Mali, West Africa,
say the name djembe comes from the phrase
(speaking a West African language), which means everyone gather together,
and that really conveys the use of the djembe drum
in West African society.
The djembe ensemble accompanies gatherings of people,
celebrations, ritual events, and most importantly,
the djembe accompanies dance,
for dancing and drumming are intimately connected.
Now, when we were playing together a moment ago,
it's likely you heard that each of us was playing a unique pattern on our drums,
and that those patterns were layered together to form a composite whole.
The patterns themselves,
were made from the various sounds the drums produce.
Those sounds organize within regular divisions of time.
Now, when drummers play together,
they have to share the same precise awareness
of the subdivisions of time.
This is the glue that holds the rhythm together.
This takes intense concentration and one-pointed focus,
especially with complex rhythms like that one.
And a way to think of this,
is to imagine yourself floating down a river
with your friends, sharing the same current,
but each of you are navigating your own craft.
In Missoula we've experienced this.
(gentle laughter)
When drummers sustain a rhythm for a length of time,
they tend to leave their ordinary sense of time awareness,
where moments seem to pass by in linear succession
and enter into what I like to call cyclic time,
where moments are experienced
through the repetitive turning of rhythmic patterns and phrases.
This is a very natural awareness,
much like waves crashing on the shore, or following your own breath.
But, sharing it with others can be profound.
It's one of the joys of drumming that I've had the pleasure of experiencing
with diverse groups of people over many years.
Now a little bit more about West African drumming,
the West African drummer does not count the rhythm,
like we do in our culture,
one and a two and a three and a four and ...
They don't even use counting as a study tool,
which is a little baffling to us in the West.
The mind of the trained drummer is wholly occupied
on the sounds of the drum, just like most languages.
When you hear them play,
you're hearing the thought they are having,
spoken through the drum, and the drums talk.
Drummers playing together are sharing
an intimate conversation in the language of rhythm.
Now in West African societies,
especially those that speak tonal languages, like Bambara,
the sounds of the drum can convey particular semantic meaning.
My teacher and friend, Abdul Doumbia, can speak Bambara phrases on his drum,
and he's even swore at me on occasion.
Thankfully, in a playful and mischievous way.
(drum music)
I am not going to translate.
(laughter)
But the goal of the musician
is to speak the rhythm clearly and articulately,
to convey beauty, energy and joy,
to support the dancers,
and hopefully help the community to gather together.
Now a trained drummer can just as easily speak the rhythm with their mouth,
as they can with their hands on the drum.
Both modes of expression are intimately connected.
Speaking in the mouth,
the drummer emulates the sounds of the drum
as a stream of syllables and vocable phrases.
Now all the drummers I've studied with can speak the rhythm,
but they each speak in their own unique way.
I think that reflects their own inner listening,
the inner sound of the rhythm in themselves.
So, there's no codified and agreed upon
system of drum talk, in Mali for example,
but students of a particular teacher
may emulate and mimic their teacher's speech.
I want to give you an example of drum talk.
The great emissary of West African drumming to North America,
Babatunde Olatunji, who also influenced the bebop jazz musicians of the 1950s,
Babatunde would speak this way,
for the bass tone of the drum (drum music),
he would say (drumming sound effect).
For the edge tone (drum music),
he would say (drumming sound effect).
For the slap tone (drum music),
he would say (drumming sound effect).
And so that rhythm we played earlier,
he would speak it this way.
(drum sound effects)
(drum music)
All right., both modes of expression.
My teacher, Abdul, would speak it a bit differently,
but conveying the same thought.
He would say,
(drum sound effects)
(drum sounds)
All right.
Now before I teach all of you some drum language, you ready?
Yes, yes.
I want to share a couple final ideas
which give me a lot of excitement.
New research in the fields of neuroscience and psychology,
is confirming what musicians have known and celebrated for a long, long time.
And that is that group music making,
fosters a sense of connection and communion between people,
feelings of sharing and social bonding, care for your community group.
Now how long have musicians known this?
Well, in Southern Germany,
there have been discovered paleolithic bone flutes,
which date back 43,000 years.
And it's been estimated that human beings have been playing concussion idiophones,
struck percussion instruments,
for a lot longer than that, perhaps 100,000 years or more.
So we've been playing music a long, long time.
The groove is in our bones. Yeah.
So, to put this idea into a more modern context,
in language from a recent scientific study
on drumming, the brain and behavior,
synchronized drumming, drumming in synchrony,
enhances activity in the reward centers of the brain,
and facilitates pro-social commmitment.
It's a nice phrase, pro-social commitment, caring for one another.
And for me, it's these moments of connection between people,
the light of discovery and joy in the eyes of those experiencing it,
that have inspired my musical life for over 20 years.
And for me,
rather than reduce the size of music education programs
in school districts around our country,
which my group, Drum Brothers, has experienced firsthand,
or eliminate music programs entirely,
we should rather create more opportunities for group music making, for all ages.
More opportunities which engender this special form of intimacy
and sharing that is our birthright.
I think we're hardwired for it.
Should we see if we are?
All right.
I want to invite you all to join me in a simple rhythm,
and what I'd like to do is just divide our audience
into just three basic sections, thirds.
You're a little greater than a third,
so if some of you want to bleed over to the edges,
you're welcome to.
And I want you to join me in a simple spoken and sung rhythm,
and just put on your beginner's mind hat,
your playful, experimental hat, and sing this with me.
I want you all to try this.
(drumming sound effects)
(audience drumming sound effects)
Ah, now this third of the audience, let's do a second part.
All right, (drumming sound effects).
(audience drumming sound effects)
Can you snap your fingers?
(audience singing drum effects)
Yeah, this third section, let's do a third part.
(drumming sound effects)
How loud can you sing? Bring it up, eh!
Bring it up, eh yeah eh!
Add some harmony, oh oh oh. Add some harmony.
Whatever you want.
(drumming sound effects)
When I raise my hands, let's sustain the note and end.
Keep on singing.
When I raise my hands, we'll sustain the note together.
Here we go. (drumming sound effects).
(applause) (cheering)
Yeah, yes.
(applause)
If you can say it, you can play it.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank TEDx, and everyone. Thank you.
(applause)