The Djembe – An Instrument of Community
Leah Roy

Scholars date the djembe drum to at least the twelfth century. It originated from the ancient Mali Empire of West Africa and has been such a powerful instrument of community spirit that it persists even today, growing in popularity around the world. The djembe is an agent for cultural exchange and transformation.

For the Malinke (the descendants of the Mali Empire) and other ethnic groups in West Africa, the djembe was used to bring people together, reinforce cultural identity and enhance the communal spiritual experience. It was used to celebrate births, marriages, initiations and the coming of age of young adults; to mark the harvest, the full moon and the appearance of masks; to welcome visitors and celebrate gender roles. All of these were/are occasions for the community to gather together and witness itself. Each specific occasion had its own rhythm - there were songs played only for weddings, or for the harvest, while some songs were reserved only for men or for women.

You can imagine our excitement in December 2007 when world-renowned master drummer Mamady Keita gathered fifteen of his closest students, including Bill Scheidt of Living Rhythms in Winston-Salem and myself, for a three-week journey into the heart of djembe music. Once in Guinea, we spent 10 days in the capital city of Conakry, with other drumming students from eight countries and, under Mamady Keita’s direction, created a historic performance that we would tour in his native region of Guinea, the Wassolon. As we were preparing to leave the city and journey cross country into the savannah, Mamady put it into perspective for us, “We’re going to make history,” he said, “the people of the Wassolon are waiting for you.”

On the eve of our departure, we gathered at his home, and listened to him speak of his village and the region from which he came and to which we would soon travel. He spoke for hours about the history of the village which lies in the heart of the Mandingue, the ancestral home of the Malinke; he spoke about the traditional way of living in the village as well as the code of respect; and, as he spoke of the difficult conditions we would find in the village, he shared a Malinke proverb, “if you love the snake, you have to love slithering.” In other words, if we were to learn about the beauty of Malinke culture, we would also have to endure the dust, heat and tough conditions in which the Malinke traditionally live when we visited his village.

Indeed the conditions were difficult, simply getting across the country was a challenge. It is a 470 mile trip to Balandougou from Conakry, but due to poor vehicle and road conditions, it took our caravan a full 32 hours to get there. We traveled across three of the four climates in the country (maritime, mountain and savannah) and saw some of the cultural differences among the various ethnicities, including the Susu and Puehl (or Fula) people.

The arduous travel was a small price to pay, and we spent the remaining 11 days in Balandougou, where the richness of the Malinke culture left me breathless. We got to see and hear traditional music of all kinds, watched traditional masked and unmasked dances, hear and watched the praise-song of the griots. We saw formal gift-giving ceremonies, celebrated the holiday of Tabaski, and saw a traditional naming ritual. We played for four villages in the area and the musicians and dancers of each village performed for us. The cultural exchange was deeply felt by both the villagers and visitors alike. For example, after playing in Balandougou, the elders of the village actually said to us, “now we can die.” The musical tradition that had spawned from their culture, now in danger of dying out, had returned to the village by way of students from thousands of miles away. The elders saw the enduring power of the djembe bring people together not only in the village, but all across the world.

A major influence in the evolution of the djembe has been the rise of the national drum and dance ensembles, also called ballets. With the independence of several West African countries, Guinea among them, traditional drumming and dancing was re-organized for performance troupes that could tour the region and world to serve as cultural ambassadors. Musical traditions were adapted to performance settings rather than the village environment, and rhythms were changed to allow for faster playing. While the ballets have contributed to the worldwide interest in the djembe, many new students to the drum mistook the music of the ballet for tradition and thus misinformation spread not only in the West, but in Africa itself.

Another factor in the djembe’s current evolution is that with the rise of Islam throughout the countryside, the traditional animist religious practices have started to fade away. As certain occasions are no longer observed, the accompanying rhythms are no longer played. So even in the village, the seat of traditional djembe music, the instrument has become less ubiquitous.

One fortunate result of the ballets has been the emergence of world-renowned master drummers such as Mamady Keita. Mamady saw the need to establish a worldwide school dedicated to preserving the tradition of the djembe and founded Tam Tam Mandigue, which translates to “Drums of the Malinke.” Several years ago, Mamady expressed a wish that he might bring his top students from around the world to his village of Balandougou, to return to the roots of the music. As long-time students to Mamady, my husband and I were blessed enough to receive an invitation to join the group.