African music, and drumming affords a high level of inclusivity and accessibility, whilst providing challenging to adults and children alike. Right from the first session, pupils will be playing together with enthusiasm and confidence.

Why African Drumming?

African Drumming courses are ideal for groups wishing to focus on rhythm skills, as well as look at different ways to represent sound visually, and build textures, without the initial clutter of melody and harmony. It is possible to tailor a scheme for anything from a half term to a year, that addresses all the NC key elements of music, whilst scaffolding the learning process and fostering a love of music and music making. It is also a very 'boy friendly' solution to ensure enthusiasm and engagement.

Learning African Drumming

Typically, a course will begin with a number of sessions given to a mixture of rhythm games, playing technique  tasks, and learning simple several-part rhythmic pieces. Quickly pupils will be introduced to the idea of a leader, who signals changes, breaks and variations in the music. Pupils learn through a mix of aural recollection, graphic and word based patterns, and later traditional notation.

Singing, vocalisations and percussion are quickly integrated into the pieces learnt, to provide a variety to the texture and further differentiation of challenge.

Gradually, the group are introduced to more challenging rhythms and an increasing number of parts in combination, so that they need to work hard in actively listening to the sound produced, for clues to their own role.

Soon, pupils are encouraged to contribute ideas for rhythms and themes for rhythm writing, as well as methods for recording their ideas, as the leader facilitates both group and individual composition of samba pieces. The class are encouraged to reflect critically on the work produced, having played each as a group, and are scaffolded with the vocabullary shared and modelled by the leader.

As time goes on, pupils are encouraged to take the role both of soloist and leader, actively improvising the music, and controlling the texture by combining the instrument groups, rhythms and break patterns.

Development

African Drumming and music offers an unlimited range of rhythmic developments, ensuring that a class can always be challenged and pushed forward in their skills and understanding, whilst supporting the least confident or least able members.

What Next?

Following a wider opportunities drumming based unit of work, a next steps club is a popular route to continued drumming based music-making. However, African drumming playing transfers very smoothly to junk music making, which can be run as a club, or integrated with other wider opportunities or workshop genres, such as Samba, Steel Pans, Mini-pans, Junk Music, or with a course on melody instruments, such as woodwind or mixed brass.

Locate other local schools that have been part of the project.

For resources relating to African music and drumming, visit the Resource Library.

Links to African music and African drumming websites, and web based resources, visit the links directory.