Monday, 30 March 2015

Re-skinning a Djembe

Re-skinning a drum isn't rocket science, but neither is it easy to do a professional job. I've been re-skinning djembes for about 12 years now and it's only in the last few years that I've managed to do what I'd call 'professional' quality work. This is down to mastery of several distinct stages, each of which needs to be done perfectly if one is to achieve a professional standard...

For the first few years I achieved a reasonable standard, but I could never understand how some drum builders managed to get so much tension on the skin without having to put in several rows of 'diamonds'. Indeed my first 50 or so drums needed about 5 or 6 rows of diamonds to get anywhere near adequate tension in the skin, and even then the skin tended to slip through the rings as I added more and more diamonds, limiting the amount of tension I could ultimately get. I had seen some people in Guinea lacing the skin to the 'flesh ring' but it wasn't until a friend showed me the technique that I realize its importance. I have come to realize that this is an absolutely crucial step in getting a djembe to solo pitch without putting in row upon row of diamonds...

The trick is to lay the wet skin (which has been soaked in water for at least a couple of hours) on the floor, fur side up, place the flesh ring in the centre, cut eye-holes in a full circle equidistant from the ring (about 3 inches), then thread rope through the eye-holes and gradually pull it tight so it wraps around the metal ring. I use a knotted piece of rope to mark off the points around the ring, and a stanley blade extended half-way out to make the cut. This is because if you have the blade fully extended then the slit will be too wide and will tear with tension.

Stage 1:

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Stage 2:

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Stage 3:

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Stage 4:

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Stage 5:

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Creating a 'wrap' like this will mean that the skin cannot slip through the rings in the next stage, allowing an incredible amount of tension to build up way before we get to the pulling stage..this is probably the single most important trick in getting a djembe to solo pitch.
Prior to this I usually prepare the djembe, which means removing the old skin, pulling the rope through to leave a couple of inches slack on each vertical so the other ring can be lifted a couple of inches above the rim of the shell, and removing the verticals from a third to a half of the crown ring (the one that isn't wrapped up in the skin). Arranging the rope like this will allow you to place the skin + flesh ring wrap on the shell and slide the crown ring over it:


Stage 6:

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Next you re-thread the rope, taking care not to put any tension on the rope. This is absolutely critical and I have learned this the hard way. If you put tension on the rope too early you end up with problems later on that can mean, at worst, having to undo all the rope and start again. When you have re-threaded all the rope the rum should look something like this:


Stage 7:

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Now can start adding a bit of tension. You need to be very careful here and only add the tiniest amount of tension, by hand, on the first pass, otherwise the ring will descend too far on one side making it impossible to get it even later on...

It takes me several rounds before the rings begin to descend past the bearing edge of the drum. Once you get to this point you can start to be a bit more firm and I usually use a stick, or a long Stanley screwdriver at this stage. You need to be very delicate at this stage though, as it is all too easy to put too much tension in here (the stick / screwdriver method creates an enormous amount of torque).


Stage 8:

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I sometimes use mole grips to stop the rope slipping back after each pull but if you do this, be careful not to let them damage the wet skin. Remember to keep checking how far the rings are descending on each pull to ensure that the rings descend evenly. Once the rings are level with, or slightly below the bearing edge of the djembe, then I remove the rope from the skin wrap and unfold the skin. Whether the rings should be level with, slightly above, or slightly below the bearing edge of the djembe is highly debated amongst drum builders and ultimately depends on the amount of tension that you have created. I know one very good drum builder who gets so much tension at the wet pull stage that he lets the ring descend a couple of centimetres...almost to its final depth. Other builders will tell you categorically that the rings should be no lower than level with the bearing edge at this stage. Personally I set them just below...


Stage 9:

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At this point I have enough tension that the skin will already resonate an a rudimentary bass, tone and slap can be achieved even while the skin is still wet.

Next comes, arguably, one of the most important stages of the entire process if one is to achieve a professional build. For years I could not fathom how professional drum builders manage to get a skin wrap with no creases that appeared almost 'shrink-wrapped' around the drum head. The trick is to stretch the skin down while wrapping rope tightly round and round the drum. When I say stretch I mean really stretch...using as much force as you can...this process takes a lot out of me and I end up sweating with the rope burning into my hands from the friction. You have to work on a few inches at a time, stretching the skin down and pulling a section of rope over that section until it grips...then turning the drum a fraction and repeating the process over an over until the rope is tightly bound around the stretched skin.


Stage 10:

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Lastly I use a razor blade on the top surface of the skin, in order to remove the top layer of skin to leave a smooth, lighter coloured, playing surface.

Then it's time for a cold beer and a rest! The drum now needs to dry completely. The amount of time this takes depends on the climate. Personally I give it 7 full days in a centrally heated house in the winter and the same outside in the summer in the UK.

When you remove the rope you get to see, for the first time, whether you have achieved a good finish. If you have done a good job the skin should be smooth all the way round with no creases. I don't have a picture of the same drum at this stage but here is another I did around the same time:


Stage 11:

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Next I cut the skin down to around 1 cm longer than its final length. This is because in the process of dry pulling the skin can become slightly bent and stretched. Thus I leave the final cut until I have finished pulling completely.

The dry pull is simply a matter of making several rounds, adding a bit more tension each time. I usually do this over the course of a few days, to give it chance to settle in between each round of pulling.

Here are a couple of finished drums...


Stage 12:

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That's it! Like I said at the beginning: It's not rocket science...it's just a matter of carefully completing a series of stages, making sure you get each stage perfect. Why not try it yourself?


Sunday, 8 March 2015

About Me

About me

422077_10150567246816671_721387243_nI have always been drawn to music. Some of my earliest memories are of filling empty milk bottles with just the right levels of water to create the notes I needed to reproduce nursery rhymes or songs I had learned at school. As soon as I was old enough I began to learn an instrument at school. At first they tried me out on violin, but after breaking several bows they gave me a trumpet, presumably because it was harder to break a metal instrument! Being a rather loud child the trumpet certainly suited my personality and I played classical trumpet right the way through primary and secondary school, achieving grade 5 practical and grade 3 theory.
For some time I was aware that the music I was learning was not satisfying me…I longed to play blues or jazz but classical was all that was on offer, so I gave up classical music while at college and taught myself to play the electric guitar. After several years spent playing in bands I migrated to acoustic guitar and then, while at university my parents brought back a didgeridoo from Australia and I was hooked. I taught myself to circular breath in a matter of hours and played didge in every spare moment. I loved the sound of the didge…the mystical sound it produced and how it was so intimately linked to breathing, but there was one instrument that I was even more drawn to…hand drums. Whenever I saw drumming at a festival I longed to try but was always too shy. So one day I bought a djembe from the local music shop and took it home to play in private.

Jon FireFrom the first moment I laid my hands on it I knew that this was the instrument I was destined to play. That sounds corny I know but it’s the truth. I had an aptitude for hand drums that I had never possessed for trumpet or guitar. I loved the way I could improvise immediately and found rhythm intoxicating and meditative in equal measure. I started taking my djembe along to parties and then to clubs, playing alongside DJs. Since I was never very good at dancing (it made me feel very self-conscious and was never fun like it seemed to be for others) it gave me a role at festivals and parties. I became the ‘drum guy’ at university and took it with me wherever I went…
After I’d been playing for a couple of years I saw a poster advertising ‘African Drumming’ lessons and thought it would be interesting to learn a different style of playing. Besides, I’d reached a plateau and was unsure how to progress so this seemed the perfect next step…

Just like from the first moment I touched a djembe I knew it was for me, from the very first class I attended I knew that West African drumming was the style that I loved. It forced me to focus and control my playing…to listen to the other interlocking parts and appreciate how they interacted with my part. It was as if a whole new world of possibilities had opened up. I was hooked.

WOSP 2012 Year
I played once a week in this class and progressed fast…I became quite obsessive and would sing the rhythms to myself as I walked down the street…I couldn’t get them out of my head and they would keep me awake long into the night.

When I left university I found myself at a crossroads and faced with a choice of whether to follow my heart or my head. Being a person of passion my heart won out and I found myself buying a one-way ticket to The Gambia, initially to stay with my teacher’s teacher Maitre Samsou. The first time I saw him play was a revelation…simply jaw dropping. Seeing your first djembefola is a bit like your first love…it is truly overwhelming and nothing else will ever come close. I simply could not believe what I was seeing and hearing…it was like magic…I couldn’t believe that this was humanly possible. It certainly made me realize that I was a complete amateur! At that point I decided that I wanted to be able to do that…or at least get as close to it as I could…

1491648_644020515676977_8355960554153330633_nI studied with Samsou for about three months, then took a taxi to Guinea Conakry. It’s a long story and I don’t have room to tell it all here, but I ended up living in West Africa for three years. I played with the local djembe troupe in a village called Kissidougou for a year when I landed a job with a French NGO, stayed with Fadouba Olaré for two weeks, spent time in Sierra Leone and Mali, before returning to The Gambia to study and play with Maitre Samsou for a whole year. I returned to the UK in 2005 determined to try and make my living out of teaching the djembe.

African drumming 8Initially I started a small drumming group in Sheffield, while taking every opportunity to learn at workshops, drum festivals and studying privately with several djemebfolas residing in the UK. I have studied extensively with Nansady Keita, Iya Sako and Seckou Keita (amongst others). As I learned more solo I started to realise that there was an inconsistency between the way djembefolas taught solo and the way they actually played solo in concert. While the standard way to learn and teach solo was in the form of learned solo phrases, I noticed that when djembefolas actually played they did not play these solo phrases but rather improvised using certain recurring themes. Over many years of teaching, learning and observing I developed my own unique approach to teaching solo. In addition to teaching the set solo patterns that were passed to me by djembefolas, I started to write down the commonly occurring themes that djembefolas used in improvisations. I have come to call these ‘Solo Rudiments’ and teach these independently of the phrases in which they occur. By teaching beginners to improvise using simple elements I try to get people over the fear of improvisation. In my classes beginners learn to improvise as they learn to play, so that when they are ready to solo for real they do not have the fear that holds many people back. This is a defining feature of my teaching style and people who take my classes regularly come to see solo as just another part of playing.

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Throughout this period I practiced every day. I rented a small studio space and played whenever I could. I became obsessed with trying to reproduce authentic sounds…the sharp slap and the deep dry popping tones that djembefolas produced with ease. Many of the exercises that I now teach grew out of this practice regime and I have developed several ‘practice patterns’ that I used to develop my slap /
 tone distinction. I would play these patterns for hours until they became a meditation. Sometimes after 30 minutes or an hour a bit of magic would happen and I’d start to generate the true sounds of the djembe. To this day there is no greater pleasure for me than to produce crystal clear slaps and tones…when I get it right it is as if I am listening to two drums play rather than one. Another thing that became a staple of my practice routine was to play endless echauffements, sometimes for an hour or even two without stopping. I’d play until the slaps, like a ticking clock, blended into the background leaving the tones to emerge as melody. I call these exercises ‘Melodies in Tones’ and believe them to be one of the most powerful exercises in developing good technique.
Jon Fire_Snapseed
Jon and Kat djembe and danceThrough developing my own practice routine, as well as through teaching and learning over many years, I have developed a set of exercises that I have distilled into the lessons on this website. They embody my teaching style and my philosophy of djembe and dundun. Unlike other teachers I do not only teach fixed patterns, accompaniments and solo but also practice patterns that are my own creations, exercises that are derived from listening to djembefolas (such as the melody in tones) and, most importantly, improvisation. This last aspect is the most neglected and, in my opinion, the most important if one is to truly express oneself on djembe. In addition I try to provide lessons on certain aspects that are ‘mysteries’ among djembe students. Thus I teach how to switch between different pulses in 12/8 time…or how to turn a syncopated kenkeni pattern from on-beat to off-beat in your head without missing a beat…or how to play that tricky slappy-flammy-rolly thing that you always hear in Wassolonka but no-one ever explains. I try to provide instruction in the areas that I found lacking when I was learning.

This journey of learning and teaching is a constant source of wonder and frustration and sometimes I think I will never achieve my goal…at other times I feel so close I can touch it. Sometimes after an hour practicing on my own I achieve 99% consistency and great quality sounds…other times my left hand desserts me and I feel a million miles away. But throughout it all I keep practicing, learning and teaching and as I learn I pass on that knowledge as best I can.
This website represents my knowledge distilled into lessons on the key areas. Along the way I try to pass on a little of my philosophy of practice, of solo, of meditation and focus and in so doing hope to make the journey a little less stressful and a little more beautiful for those that come after me.

Good luck and welcome to the journey!

Monday, 16 February 2015

Introduction to Djembe



If you are completely new to West African drumming then a few things need to be explained in order for you to understand both the course material presented here, and West African Mandé drumming in general…

When I talk about ‘West African drumming’ it is, in fact, slightly misleading because within West Africa there are many different drumming traditions. Even within each country there are several different ethnic groups and each group has their own style of drumming, their own types of drum and so on. Thus in Senegal there is Sabar, in Nigeria there is Yoruba and in Ghana there Kpanlogo. Each of these is as different from the kind of drumming that I have learned as Irish folk music is from Gypsy Jazz! To be clear then, the style of drumming presented here is from ‘Mandé’ areas of West Africa. The medieval Mandinka empire spanned parts of several modern countries including Guinea Conakry, Mali, Burkina Faso and The Ivory Coast. Thus this style of drumming is, originally at least, Mandinka drumming, and each country that has a Mandé ethnic group has a similar drumming tradition. Such groups include the Maninka of Guinea, the Bambara of Mali and the Mandé of Burkina Faso.

Mandé drumming revolves round a goblet-shaped hand drum called the djembe, and up to three bass drums that are played with sticks and, in some areas, with metal beaters and bells. The exact combination differs from region to region. In the South of Guinea Conakry, for example, it is traditional to have just two djembes with no dunduns. Instead the djembes are accompanied by several women on shekeré (a gourd covered with a net of shells that acts as a kind of shaker). In some regions of Northern Guinea and Mali the music is played with a single mid-sized dundun with no bell (instead the free hand grips and releases the skin to create closed and open sounds), in other areas they play without kenkeni. Despite these regional variations though, the ‘standard’ arrangement has come to mean Dundun Bah, Sangbang and Kenkeni in the bass sections, with two djembes playing accompaniment and one djembe playing solo. The prevalence of this system is such that some areas that traditionally did not use all three bass drums have now adopted this arrangement!

There is some confusion over the terms dundun, dunun, dundun ba etc so let’s clear that up here: The collective term for the bass drums is ‘dunduns’ or ‘dununs’, depending on regional pronunciation (as far as I am aware the pronunciation ‘djundjun’ is a western invention and does not exist in West Africa). Nevertheless each dundun has its own name. The lowest bass drum is called the dundun (or dunun) ba. In Maninka the word ‘ba’ means ‘big’, so ‘dunun ba’ simply means ‘big dunun’. However, people often omit the word ‘ba’ and just say dundun or dunun to refer to the lowest bass drum. The next up in pitch is called the sangbang and the highest is called the kenkeni (regional differences exist for the names of these drums and the ones I give are the Maninka names, from Guinea Conakry)

A ‘rhythm’, in West Africa, means a combination of dundun ba, sangbang and kenkeni, plus one or more djembe accompaniments. In villages each rhythm is traditionally played for a particular social function. Thus ‘Kassa’ is played after the harvest and ‘Soli’ was traditionally part of the male circumcision rites of passage. Thus technically the name refers to the occasion, rather than to the rhythm per sé.

Traditionally each dundun is played on its side. One hand plays the skin with a stick while the other hand plays a metal bell, mounted on the drum, with a metal beater. The combination of accompaniments on the dunduns is what defines each rhythm. Whereas the same djembe accompaniments are used on hundreds of different rhythms, the exact combination of dunduns is unique for each rhythm and gives it its characteristic ‘signature’. However, all three dundun accompaniments do not have to be unique. Certain kenkeni patterns, for example, turn up in many different rhythms, and certain dunun ba parts are also not unique. Usually, however, the sangbang is unique to each rhythm…it holds the ‘melody’ and tells us what rhythm is being played. It is important to note that this is not an absolute rule…but it is true most of the time…
Each dundun has its own part but there is some room for variation. While the kenkeni almost never varies the dundun and the sangbang can vary to a certain extent. The sangbang plays some variations, often in conjunction with the dundun. It is the dundun, however, that is the most free. A good dundun player improvises around the basic pattern and supports and talks to the solo djembe. Certain conventions exist, such as echauffement patterns, but after the solo djembe the dundun is most free to improvise.

Although traditionally each dundun is played by a different person, it is possible to fix three together and play them vertically with two sticks. In this way one person can play an approximation of all three patterns. This is often called ‘ballet-style’ because this system was adopted by ‘Les Ballets Africain de Guinea’, the national drumming troupe of Guinea Conakry. I generally use ‘ballet-style’ dunduns in my videos as accompaniment because they provide the fullest sound that a single bass player can achieve. However, on my video of Mendiani solo I choose to be accompanied by a sangbang for the exact reason described here: The sangbang in Mendiani provides the melody…it is the key to Mendiani so the solo makes most sense when played against the sangbang. To score ballet dunduns I use 3 lines, the lowest for the dundun, the middle one for the sangbang and the top one for the kenkeni. I add a further line below these three to show the handing, assuming you have the sangbang on the left and the kenkeni on the right. Throughout this course I use the terms ‘right hand’ and ‘left hand’ rather than ‘dominant hand’ and non-dominant hand’. I do this for ease of use. If you are left handed simply reverse the handing. Here is a ballet-dundun score of ‘Lolo’, the first rhythm in this course, followed by an audio file of the same rhythm:

If you want to read the rest of this article and have access to a database of lessons that include video, play-along audio files, score and blog-style write-ups then visit www.djembeweaver.com

Saturday, 12 July 2014

Drumming and the Brain



What would you say if I told you there was an exercise that, if practiced daily, would increase your IQ? What if I also told you that the same exercise would improve attention and cognitive function, increase the pain threshold, improve fine motor control, facilitate language acquisition and verbal fluency, facilitate social cohesion, improve mood and reduce fatigue, have a similar effect to Ritalin for ADD patients and provide a basis for gait training in stroke and Parkinson's patients? You'd probably tell me to stop spamming you and block me right? Admittedly it sounds too good to be true and usually if it sounds too good to be true then it is too good to be true. But what if I told you that there was sound scientific evidence for all of these claims, and that each of them is based upon a number of studies that have been published in peer reviewed journals? What if I also told you that to gain some benefit you only had to do 10 or 15 minutes a day, and that even watching people doing it is beneficial? Would you do it? Would you implement it in your school or workplace?

The exercise is playing a musical instrument and it is sadly lacking from most workplaces and many schools (there is currently no provision for music in most primary schools in the UK). Exactly why this is the case I'm not sure but I suspect it is, at least in part, due the double-edged blade of pleasure...

Music is indeed pleasurable to listen to, which may partly explain its enduring appeal throughout hominid evolutionary history (Merriam, 1964; Blacking, 1995; Trevarthen, 1999). Even listening to music can create intense emotional states that can produce measurable changes in brain chemistry (such as the release of dopamine in the striatal system observed by Salimpoor et al. 2011) while playing music affords musicians a greater tolerance to pain, which in turn suggests that endorphins are being released (Dunbar et al. 2012). But you can't escape the feeling that there's a bit more to it than pleasure. Music has the power to alter our mood or to evoke memories, we use it to help us concentrate or to relax, to synchronize our movements and help us keep moving to the beat and at its most powerful, music can transport us to another, dream-like world. Moreover learning to play a musical instrument involves diverse skills such as fine motor control, non-verbal communication, coordination, improvisation, focused attention and creating a mental state where 'flow' can occur. Given the complex skills that must be mastered in learning to play a musical instrument one might reasonably ask if a) the acquisition of these skills leads to structural and functional changes in the brain and b) these skills produce transferable effects on performance in other areas.

So what does the research say? Does music have observable effects on the brain, and does music training produce benefits in other areas?

Many studies have found that musicians score higher, on average, on a battery of tests than do non-musicians. For example one study (Hanna-Pladdy & Mackay, 2011) looked at the cognitive functioning of senior citizens as a function of the amount of musical training they had had in their lives. Of three groups, the 'high activity musicians' were better at performing visual tasks and were better at remembering words. Studies have also shown that musicians have higher IQs (Ullen, 2008), a greater digit span (Fujioka et al, 2006) and improved working memory (Parbery-Clark et al, 2009).

Yet more studies have found differences in brain structure between musicians and non-musicians and suggest that early learning of an instrument, followed by years of practice, can have profound effects on your brain. For example Gaser & Schlaug, (2003) found, "gray matter volume differences in motor, auditory, and visual–spatial brain regions when comparing professional musicians (keyboard players) with a matched group of amateur musicians and non-musicians. Although some of these multi-regional differences could be attributable to innate predisposition, we believe they may represent structural adaptations in response to long-term skill acquisition and the repetitive rehearsal of those skills".

Thus there is mounting evidence that learning to play a musical instrument affects brain structure and function. Of course singing is a popular activity that does not require learning an instrument. Nevertheless learning to sing is, in many ways, a matter of mastering ones own instrument, and thus it is likely that many of the benefits discussed above apply to singing. Indeed a 2009 study, commissioned by Chorus America, supported earlier findings that adult choral singers exhibit increased social skills, civic involvement, volunteerism, philanthropy and support of other art forms compared with non-singers. Furthermore juvenile choral singers had more academic success and possessed more valuable life-skills than their non-singing peers.

There is even evidence that merely listening to music might have significant effects in certain situations. Nilsson (2009) demonstrated that actively listening to soothing music can increase a listener’s level of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a central role in the formation of social attachment and relationships in humans and non-human primates. Blood & Zatorre (2001) found that intensely pleasurable experiences evoked by familiar music activated brain areas that are known to be active in response to other euphoria-inducing stimuli, such as food, sex, and drugs. According to Nathan Urban, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, when you concentrate your brain produces rapid, rhythmic electrical impulses called gamma waves. Conversely when you relax, it generates much slower alpha waves. It is likely, then, that the rhythm of listened-to music affects brainwaves. Indeed this very idea has informed several successful clinical therapies. For example Stanford News reported that,

"Harold Russell, a clinical psychologist and researcher in the Department of Gerontology and Health Promotion at the University of Texas, used rhythmic light and sound stimulation to treat ADD (attention deficit disorder) in elementary and middle school boys. His studies found that rhythmic stimuli that sped up brainwaves increased concentration in ways similar to medications such as Ritalin and Adderall. Following a series of 20-minute treatment sessions administered over several months, the children made lasting gains in concentration and performance on IQ tests and had a notable reduction in behavioral problems compared to the control group. Russell hopes to earn approval from the Food and Drug Administration to use the brainwave entrainment device as a treatment for ADD. The device uses an EEG to read brainwaves and then presents rhythmic light and sound stimuli through special eyeglasses and headphones at a slightly higher frequency than the brain's natural rhythm"

 According to the same article Thomas Budzynski conducted similar experiments with a small group of underachieving college students. He found that rhythmic light and sound therapy helped the  students achieve a significant improvement in their grades. Thus it seems that rhythm has observable effects on the brain and that these effects can be cognitively beneficial.

So, to summarize so far, playing a musical instrument requires a number of acquired skills that lead to structural changes in the brain and cognitive benefits for musicians. Merely listening to music confers many benefits and rhythmic sound and light can be used to improve concentration by altering brain waves. But as we shall see, that's just the tip of the iceberg...

As a treatment, rhythm has also been used with Parkinson's and stroke patients. With the addition of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) to a standard physical therapy gait programme for stroke patients improvements were seen  in velocity, stride length and muscle functioning (Thaut et al, 1997). Also, since children with specific language impairment also show impairment of music-syntactic processing, it is possible that music training might mitigate against impairment.

 The music that I currently play (West African djembe and dundun) is often referred to as a language. Indeed the Maninka verb for 'To Play' and 'To Speak' is the same (Ka Fo) suggesting a close association between music and language in West Africa. There has been much research in this area, and the link between music and language is well documented. For example, when Brown et al, (2006) asked amateur musicians to vocally improvise melodic or linguistic phrases in response to unfamiliar, auditorily presented melodies or phrases they found that the same brain areas were used in both tasks; when Charles Limb (2008) used FMRi on Jazz pianists he found that when they were 'trading 4s' (a technique in Jazz where an improvisation is passed back and forth between musicians) their Brocas areas were very active, suggesting that musical improvisation uses the language areas of the brain. Further neurological evidence of the link between music and language is provided by the observation that children with specific language impairment also show impairment of music-syntactic processing (Jentschke et al., 2008).  But perhaps most interesting of all is that mirror neurons can be activated by sound.

 Mirror neurons were a big deal when they were discovered in 1992 by Di Pellegrino and colleagues. They were the kind of game-changing discovery that makes you think about something in a completely different way.  Mirror neurons were cells in macaques that fired both when the monkeys performed a particular action and when they watched the same action being performed by another individual! Mirror cells didn't seem to care who was performing the action, suggesting that our brains are actually rehearsing the movement when we watch someone perform an action. I really will get better by watching master drummers! Even more interesting then, is the finding by Kohler, E. et al (2002) that mirror neurons in primates fire when an action is performed, seen, or heard. Moreover these neurons were located in the monkey homologue of Broca's area, the same area of the brain that is so important in language production. Think about this for a minute because it really is quite profound...these cells are activated by sound but they represent much more than that; they are activated visually but they represent much more than just visual information; Kohler et al. propose that these neurons encode the meaning of an action and as such could form the basis of language acquisition!

Thus it seems that sounds that are linked to actions activate mirror neurons it the language centres of the brain. As a djembe player who has been playing and practicing hard since the year 2000 it is likely that quite a lot of my brain represents drumming actions. According to the research on mirror neurons these 'motor programs' will be activated when I drum, when I watch someone drumming and also when I listen to someone drumming! So when I listen to that Iya Sako CD while I'm driving my brain is practicing drumming! Wow! But this makes total sense to me as a djembe player. When I sing a rhythm (something that djembe players often do) I can feel my hands wanting to move. The effect of learning to drum as part of a group on language acquisition per sé is not known, and would form an interesting area of research, but after 3 years of living in West Africa I have an anecdotal observation: West Africans are incredible linguists. Most West Africans I met spoke their own ethnic language, one or two other local languages to some extent, plus at least a decent amount of one or more colonial languages (usually French, English or Portuguese). It is very common to have a conversation amongst a group that flits back and forth between several different languages. I remember having a hilarious conversation with two truck drivers in The Gambia; one spoke Mandinka and French, the other spoke Fula, Mandinka and English, while I spoke English and a decent bit of French. Thus no matter what language was spoken at any one time, there was always one person who didn't understand and had to be translated for! I met one amazing lady from Sierra Leone who was working at a refugee camp in Guinea Conakry. She proudly told me that she spoke nine languages and then proceeded to talk in all of them! Amazing, but it is by no means unusual in West Africa to speak four, five or six languages to a reasonable standard. Rhythm, drumming and singing as a community...is woven into the fabric of life in West Africa. Infants are immersed in it from the womb and thus if drumming did facilitate language acquisition then West Africa would be a good contender for superior language skills...

Whilst it seems that on a neurological level music and language have much in common, music and language learning also share many features: Musical competence is unconsciously and automatically acquired upon exposure and develops along a standard biological timetable (Miller, 2000, p. 335), with a sensitive period (after which musical skill is substantially more difficult to acquire) occurring around 7 years of age (Habib and Besson, 2009, p. 279; see also Elbert et al, 1995; Schlaug et al, 1995; Watanabe et al, 2007). Indeed the incidence of absolute pitch has been found to be much higher in China than in the US even when groups are matched for age of onset of musical training,  suggesting that the potential for acquiring absolute pitch may be universal, and may be realized by enabling infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for acquisition of features of their native language.

 Whilst the studies considered so far have focused on the effects of music on the brain and cognition, as well as the link between music and language, other evidence suggests that music confers social benefits. In one study four year olds learned an activity in which they either a) learned a song and sang it as they synchronized their steps to music and walked around a pretend pond or b) crawled around a pretend pond without musical accompaniment. In a subsequent game those who had sung and marched together were more likely to act cooperatively than the other group. Thus it seems that coordinating our actions in a rhythmic activity promotes cooperative behaviour. Researchers from Singapore found that a musical beat facilitates concurrent stimulus processing, allowing synchronization across a group of individuals. I have already presented evidence that listening to music can increase levels of oxytocin (Nilsson, 2009), and these diverse strands of evidence lead some to argue that musical behavior is evolutionarily adaptive because it promotes group coordination and cohesion among members, and synchronizes group actions, emotions and identities (Merriam, 1964; Turnbull, 1966; Lomax, 1968; Hood, 1971; Seeger, 1987; Feld, 1994; McNeill, 1995; Trevarthen, 1999; Cross, 2001, p. 37; Levitin, 2006, p. 258; Brandt, 2008, pp. 6–7).

In his article, Music, Neuroscience, and the Psychology of Well-Being: A Precis, Croom (2011) argues that "synchronized chorusing has been found in certain species of insects (Greenfield and Shaw, 1983) and frogs (Klump and Gerhardt, 1992), and fireflies have been shown to synchronize their bioluminescent flashing at night (Buck, 1988). Researchers have also found that there are at least several hundred species of birds that perform precisely synchronized duets in order to stay in sync reproductively, strengthen partnership bonds, or defend territories (Brown, 2000b, p. 247). So it is plausible, many group selectionists argue, that musical behavior likewise evolved in humans to unite individuals into groups and strengthen partnership bonds (ibid). “Singing, marching, and laughing tunes the group,” as Seligman (2011) says"

Furthermore he argues that being in a musical group or band serves as a means of creating close relationships since rehearsal of a musical piece provides band members with a common purpose. It also means that members spend a lot of time with each other working towards a common goal. Participation in music, says Croom, is participation with, and commitment to, other people. In this sense music is a fundamentally social activity, and it is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that playing music confers social, as well as cognitive and neurological benefits.

So, to take us right back to where we started, what would you say if I told you there was an exercise that, if practiced daily, would increase your IQ, improve your attention and cognitive function, increase your pain threshold, improve your fine motor control, facilitate your language acquisition and verbal fluency, facilitate social cohesion, improve your mood and reduce fatigue, have a similar effect to Ritalin for ADD patients and provide a basis for gait training in stroke and Parkinson's patients? Would you do it? Would you implement it in your school or workplace? I have presented a wealth of evidence that learning to play a musical instrument and doing so as part of a musical group confers these and other benefits. Of course you may respond that learning an instrument is hard and requires years of dedicated practice before one can play coherently as a member of a group. While this is broadly true there are at least two musical activities that can be accessed immediately: Singing and drumming.

While learning to play hand-drums is a skill that is no easier than learning to play any other instrument, it is something that can be accessed very quickly by beginners. Whereas on a guitar one has to train ones fingers to play several chords before music can be accessed (and I know, from personal experience, that this takes a certain amount of time, effort, and pain) pretty much anyone can be taught to play a simple rhythm on a hand drum such as a djembe, and to play it as part of a group. As a drum workshop facilitator I regularly give that experience to groups who claim not to have a musical bone in their body. I do workshops with children as young as five as well as team-building sessions with adults who have never played a musical instrument and all, without exception, are playing music as part of a group within 10 minutes!

So read back over the research discussed in this article and ask yourself this: If you could find a single activity that could confer all these benefits wouldn't you be mad not to incorporate it into your daily routine? Wouldn't you jump at the chance to implement it in your school, place of work or community?

Well the activity is learning to drum as part of a group and there are musicians such as myself all over the country who facilitate high quality African drumming and rhythm workshops for schools, community and team-building. Drumming might not be a miracle cure, but if you could put all those benefits in a bottle it would sure look like one!

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