African Drumming at Ludovica

My friend Toño, from Starbucks, took me to an African drumming class. It was really interesting.

You know, I teach drumming at Rogers Park and really, I haven’t studied drumming, only teaching. So a lot of times I’m just king of winging it as I figure out how to teach drumming as I’m learning myself.

But after seeing this class, I was pretty happy that my class is fairly similar. It’s not nearly as complex, but the structure is about the same.

There where seven drummers; four playing djembe (including the teacher) and three playing dun-duns.

Here’s a recording of the class. This is the rhythm that they spent the most time on. I wish I knew what it was called. They worked really hard on it. The solo part is the teacher but at roughly 2:10 Toño takes the solo part.

After I had a dinner of al pastor, cervezas and good conversation with Toño and his wife.AA