Rhythm in the Djembe flows thanks to several factors, each of which gives a specific impression to the listener's ear. It happens that a very simple rhythmic pattern transforms into something very beautiful and varied to listen to, and it can happen that when approaching the study of the Djembe language, one has the impression of being faced with something potentially difficult to execute.
These factors greatly influence listening and hide the understanding of the degree of performance difficulty, sometimes making patterns seem difficult when they are not at all.
It is clear that there are virtuosity and difficult figures that require solid preparation, but many "simple" figures together... can make something seem difficult that, upon careful analysis of the sound material, is not; in fact, it often happens that after such analysis, everything can seem more accessible.
There are 4 factors and they all contribute together to the rhythm that emerges from a Djembe 😉
The first factor is rhythmic patterns such as: duplets, triplets, an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes, the dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note, sextuplets, etc., in other words, everything that is part of the written musical repertoire of the West (I would not neglect duration and all the classification of time signatures, duple and triple, simple and compound, etc.)
The second factor is the accents placed within the rhythmic patterns, see the discussion on syncopation. In fact, African music has a great preference for the upbeat, and many of the Djembe's rhythmic patterns begin on the upbeat, which is one of the most powerful factors affecting rhythm.
The third factor is the way of striking the Djembe. There are four main types of colors in the stroke: Slap, Tone, Bass, and Ghost (there is also the Flam, but it is not appropriate to call it a color, and it is essentially a stroke given in unison by both hands; in African music, this unison is slightly offset so much that it almost sounds like two strokes, one extremely fast following the other).
The combination of all these strokes adds complexity to the rhythm as well as great pleasure to the ear.
These are the counterparts of the "voices" of Western classical music... giving strength to one voice or another, or integrating and intertwining them to enhance each one, depending on the moment, adds depth, beauty, and uniqueness to the sound, the rhythm, and the piece being performed.
The difficulty that even an experienced musician may encounter is that the succession of colors in one way or another makes the same rhythmic patterns seem very different from each other; at this point, only a careful analysis of the sound material can facilitate the rhythmic and performance understanding of a piece.
The fourth factor, which is also an interpretive mode and contributes to the listening dynamics, is the dynamics of the stroke and the part of the instrument that the player strikes.
The softness of the hand, the number of fingers involved, the position the hand takes when striking the skin, the style of a particular performer... who started from standard percussion techniques, etc., also matter.
For technical study, it would be useful to delve into these factors one at a time.
manu59… how to write all this?
