Djembe
Created | Updated Feb 13, 2003
The word
'Djembé' or 'Jembé' is a word referring to a variety of hand drum
originating in West Africa, primarily the ex-French colonies. The first spelling being the more common. The spelling of the word comes out of an attempt by French colonists to represent the pronunciation of the first consonant, for which the French realisation of the letter 'j' was too soft. The first consonantal sound is a hard 'j' as in English 'John'and the last 'e' is pronounced as the ending of English 'Jay'.
DESIGN
A Djembe is constructed properly from one piece of wood, a length of tree trunk, normally 1-2 feet tall. This is hollowed out and shaped to taper from both ends to a thin waist in the middle. The end that will be played is normally about 10 to 18 inches or so wide and the other end somewhat smaller.
The skin is made from goat skin, stretched and dryed. The hair is shaved but often left on around the edge for presentation. The skin is attached to the drum and tensed by a combination of three metal hoops and a length of rope arranged in the 'Mali weave', an intricate series of knots and loops. One hoop is placed around the waist of the drum and two at the top. I will not go into details on this but instructions for fitting and tuning skins are easily available on the
web.
Nowadays there are also a wide range of Synthetic Djembes available. Bodies of these are normally fibre glass and the skins are of a kind of plastic. The immediate reaction from players can be hostile i think just because the djembe is so steeped in ethnic tribal associations. However, these drums can be very nice to play. They can lack the same bass umph that a real hardwood djembe gives but have some lovely and pure high tones, are often much easier to tune (often employing sytems of allen keys or similar) and they are normally much lighter and easy to transport.
PLAYING
The drum is of course a traditional instrument and the methods of its
play are mostly passed on through demonstration. As a result, views on the technicalities of djembe playing are varied. I will try and draw together the key points.
Djembe is generally taught as a 3-tone instrument. This simple scale is made up of three ways of hitting the drum (strokes): Bass, Edge/tone, and slap.
A Bass stroke is simply hitting the drum as centrally as possible with the whole, flat palm and fingers of the hand. For a good resonating bass tone the hand should be very quickly withdrawn.
The edge stroke gives the mid-range tone and is achieved by hitting the edge of the skin with all four fingers flat. The padded part of the hand at the base of the fingers should be hitting the rim of the drum and the fingers should be entirely flat so they hit all at once. Different players have differing views on this stroke. Some play with fingers together, and some with them spread, some linger on the skin to mute the sound a little and some withdraw the hand quickly. This is a matter of personal preference and the sound of your own drum. Generally spread fingers give a slightly higher, brighter tone so closed fingers can be useful for distinguishing more clearly from slap strokes.
The Slap stroke is the most difficult of the three to master. This time the pad at them bottom of the whole hand is brought down on the drum rim with a loose wrist so that just the tips of the fingers slap against the skin. The fingers should hit slightly towards the edge of the drum or else the sound can be very bassy. I have found the best way of training oneself in this motion is to spend a while bouncing the hand on the edge of the drum, holding fingers clear of the skin, then slowly lowering the fingers until the tips start to hit.
