and turn it over to ko ogawa and wadaba okay can you hear me all right can you hear
me we can hear you okay great um sorry to do this to y'all but i got some big blob in the
middle of my screen i'm gonna get rid of rid of okay my name is ko ogawa and um i will be
presenting wataban a second here but i want to mention that for the first 40 minutes this
program will feature what about and then later on we're going to try and do some playing ourselves
and what i would like to encourage everybody to do is at some point take a moment and run to some
place in your house and grab something to play and ultimately if you don't have something to grab you
can just play on your legs like that or you can clap but you can grab things like a water bottle
or a plastic bucket or a pot and play that or a plastic bottle with rice in it or even a little
skillet so just wanted to mention that to you but before we do the drum circle
stuff we are going to do traditional produce traditional rhythms from west africa
dna specifically and the person that will be leading this his full name is mamadi
kuruma but his nickname wadabah is pretty much what everybody calls him and
in his language the malinki language what aba means great panther so um the rhythms that we will
be doing with him are very ancient very specific um very complex beautiful rhythms with multiple
parts and it's it's kind of like a drum orchestra with a lot of sophistication and um the
rhythms are played for specific reasons in life together with the community
traditionally it's not an audience um uh and performer kind of a gig it's uh
everybody participates in the village kind of a gig so without further ado i
present to you the great panther guinea west africa thank you everybody thank you amen for she whatever sorry my english little bit i try today
i play a little bit deeper my future my ability of everybody together i don't want to
lose my speculators one people take your house your room your friend your family your mama
your father one day and me yeah somebody i'm sorry today i said oh what happened now
because everybody my mouth inside the back you can't can nobody know are you happy i'm not
happy sorry about that because everybody must appreciate god if you check problem good
way i thought it goes away go there go away everybody just go away don't
tell me too much problem everybody friend papa
everybody should care everybody and prayer god go away today everybody see me i'm happy
happy i born from the ground my father my mama everybody play
dance singing everything fun because the trump music african people
american people is music that's medicine good medicine for help people for help think for
help you body help you up to help you you know nobody know tomorrow everybody knows yesterday
passed you did you see what happened in your life tomorrow somebody know you know and today i pray
from everybody everywhere i want everybody happy everybody learn a little bit
my pleasure out later today from adidas west africa thank you
thank you for coming to me thank you so wow okay do so wow so so so so the next song that we're going
to do is one of the oldest rhythms in malenkay history it is called sofa
and this rhythm in the past was only played to celebrate soldiers going out or coming back
from war nowadays since there are no longer inter cultural wars in the culture
they use this rhythm to welcome very very important people kings diplomats
things like that people with big names very um important rhythm in the history of guinea
and not a lot of people play this rhythm anymore and so these rhythms are very much
at risk of becoming extinct so what about cass is on the tradition of keeping
these rhythms alive by playing them to you and he hopes that if you ever decide to
learn this tradition you pass on these the information correctly so that their
culture will stay alive and next so far so so so so so so so so so what our next song is called means tomorrow means speech so
it means tomorrow's talk and there are many many different proverbs and
stories in the malinka tradition that teach people and children about how to do their life
correctly so the story of cinecom is all about um what do you do today what you say today is
going to set you up for what happens tomorrow it's not exactly like karma it's a little bit
more direct for example parents will say to their children to think about cinecom because
if they're disobedient now they're going to be looked at as being you know not a very good
child or not a very good person tomorrow if you talk back to your parents then tomorrow
your life isn't going to be quite as good for you if uh if i talk to a stranger and i'm just meeting
them and i'm i'm i'm like in a bad mood and i and i talk sharply to them for all i know they're
an attorney and i get to know him better and a year or two later they're going to help me but
if i'm mean to them today they're not going to so cynical is a big big lesson
in life and their words say so the words are singing all about tomorrow's talk african tired every time you talk
to your friend think tomorrow you talk to your father think tomorrow you talk
to your son think tomorrow what happened in your life tomorrow because today you don't have money
you don't have risk tomorrow you have the money you don't have no risk you don't know you talk
your friend your family your father your mama your friend before you think you talk think
brush okay thank you music okay thank you oh is foreign so uh my uh ah thank you thank you thank you at this point buddy jones he has
been playing drums since forever yes and he is forever too he's an elder in our
community how much would you turn 80 or something well um caleb can say that i'm the elder but
in traditional african drumming i i would have been sitting rather than standing as the
elder but they got me standing in their city um yes i have been playing dramas most of my
life but um there's this funny thing about creativity and for many years when i would play
drums i thought i was coming up with something new until i ran into ko ogawa and she
said to me you really have the rhythms but they're in the wrong place
and i didn't quite understand that until she introduced me to guatemala and i'd
like to say in my experience with swimming that both kale and wadava are the best instructors
and gym and african drumming that i've encountered but what's what's more important is the great
thought hi angelo said what you do speaks so loudly i can't hear what you're saying and
that definitely is the case in this situation because you can't see our mouth move it's all
covered and the only thing we can do is to make some good drumming and it wasn't until i ran
into kale and water to understand that drumming is more than just a rhythm it's a language it's
a way of telling stories that's right so if any of you ever have the possibility of learning
basic traditional african drumming believe me it will enhance all the other music that you've
been playing because where did it come from the motherland and if we if we know those basics
i'm not a good drummer yet but i can sit i can sit into i can sit in and follow it's more important
that i'm known as a guy who loves to play with the group rather than to show the group what i have
it's more important that i participate and if you learn those basic beats you can participate
anywhere you want is that my minute one of them all right thank you so good much everybody's listen my
friend that's my good girlfriend long time 20 years 20 years 20 years and
nobody every time i said what i need is help me night time meeting time money time daytime we
don't say it no he said yes i want to help you that's important that's a true friend
important important to help somebody help your friend this drum i think
that's what is you know original drum because this drum help people
work in farm farm farming farming in america or america that's a machine
tractor working you sell everything my country not now but a little bit people
buy machine learning special my village today no machine every time he follow the hell
what come on don't be drunk people said talk drunk the man just helped and the woman club need i need one big machine for tech africa
the only machine the old machine is the command and there's all the machines
for that and i need to know okay yes come on thank you i invite you all to close
your eyes and think about picture this the central valley of california a giant
crew of people out in the fields working and drummers playing for them just like that while
they were that would be awesome that'd be so great okay so now here's the iphones the iphones of
africa this is the telephone sorry we're going to cut our heads off but i want you to be able to see
you want to talk about the telephone from africa this cream becoming west africa but that's
different coming for it for it i think you know yeah so normally okay so the malenke don't really
have these instrument in their tradition but there is a forest culture there's 47 different languages
spoken in guinea i think something like that 23 sorry i'm wrong 23 different languages spoken
in cuny and one of the cultures is where this instrument comes from the forest deep in the
forest where they have lots of trees come and forest yeah no my child not your style
because people that are mastered around now if not play they don't know the story this
story i learned little bit but i don't know every day because you know my style my style
is sanbang and kinkini that's my my family and i know a little bit the place foreign telephone
telephone see the phone hello everybody coming the chief command talk everybody my my place yeah
well that's still one before that's the megaphone hey everybody come and meet him you know that's
different style and this time i can't lie that i know every just every time story is i know a
little bit because of my my master graham famous he saw me okay thank you you start now i like
to play man i don't like too much talking okay do good so okay oh that was fun okay dang oh how much so much time we got we got five minutes everybody happy happy non-go
sleepy no sleeping nothing okay this music come in my place of the world because this
music talk what is your life you take a time somebody like 100 500 you
see everything your life that's you you see you see that's important music to take
time good time good life you see every time you need to see everything you need the story
you you you got a family i saw i saw i saw sam my wife the father 105.
Yeah
my father died at 105. 105. that he saw a lot in his life we saw
everything this music come and talk this people like decades long life this
music come and talk nice see to take long live long life you see every time you
see something different you know okay thank you thank you for listening to me because
my english too little bit you know okay yes foreign foreign everybody wow oh hello so so one more really okay everybody i think everybody
happy everybody taking your head move your body shuts you down you sit down on her enough
unless i'm played wrong because of my creator i like playground for all people see
whatever mamadi kuruma africa west africa because my father my mama everybody mama yes men
diani tim funny you know how he did my father play dunumba play good good before before his pathway
you can see it can listen can't hear you can't hear because in the bed he played the bell and
he dipped that made himself deaf it's death that's all i'm missing for
nobody i that's the end missing what about today you need play you need
something call me okay you have the question what about needing you play again
i love that okay okay when you're back so so so so so hey thank you everybody thank you
thank you thank you thank you so don't go away because now
you get to play don't go away okay um we don't have a lot of time
left but how much time do we have left oh sorry i had to unmute myself there i i'd
say let's let's give it 10 15 minutes for sure 10 15.
Okay i can do that all right so uh now you just saw this i mean i can say
it's phenomenal i love this stuff and and i am never i i am never tired of it it never
ceases to amaze me the energy that what about brings and uh you know it's not about how fast
you are it's not about how complicated you are it's the feeling it's the feeling and here
in the united states we really don't have many traditions left where we're all playing
together right we're all dancing together or singing together right the closest thing we
have now is things like hip-hop on the street rap on the street uh if there's some real old
folks that still do square dancing right uh stuff like that where it's not an audience thing with
uh performers we're all actually just a community celebrating together and playing together so um
the traditional african music very sophisticated very complex but in america we've started a
new tradition tradition of drum circle drumming and i want to point out that this is very this is
like the opposite end of the extreme what we just did is not drum circle drumming what we're going
to do now is drum circle drumming and drum circle is where everybody just plays what they want and
as long as it's in time it all works you can play homemade things like you don't have to have
money just have to have people willing to get together this is a plastic bottle with
some rice in it i showed it to you earlier you can this is something like this costs a lot of
money in the store but you don't have to have it this is a frying pan it can sound kind of like
a like a cowbell or something it's got two tones one tone there one tone there you can play that you can even play
a pot right you can play a play a pot okay so you can play that these
water jugs sound really great gotta hold them kind of loosely they got a wonderful sound so there's a
lot of things you can play that are free but uh so one thing that i have found drum circle drummond for people like
us americans all over i have found that people's need people need to create people
need to engage themselves in rhythm and music and so one of the easiest and ex most accessible
ways to do that is a drum circle situation so uh there's two things that are really important to
remember about drum circles um to get the feeling and to have the feeling and embrace the feeling
that makes it possible to be in the rhythm is a very healing very powerful thing and if you
keep that in mind when you're trying to do this and when then when you get it you just you
feel so much better afterwards if you're feeling down-hearted you're feeling
depressed you're feeling like uh like you're being squashed
by your society or whatever you play this and you feel better and you feel
stronger right so um the second thing to remember is when you're engaging in a drum circle situation
the best thing that you can do even though you're getting this personal thing out of it is to serve
the group so to be to be of service to the group there are many ways to be of service but the first
and foremost thing that a drum circle needs is the bottom i call it the bottom because it's the base
it's the foundation for the music and it allows everybody else to kind of be more free
um so before if you're in there to jam and be free and stuff that is a
privilege in a drum circle that you only should take advantage of if you are also being
of service to the bottom because without the bottom the music falls apart with the bottom
the music stays so i'm going to have my knife yeah i'm going to have my two beautiful friends
play the bottom for you and i'm going to offer some rhythms that you can play along with
with me so they're going they're going they're going and then i'll play something
and then you play something and then i play something and then you play something i won't
be able to hear you but maybe i could see you uh out there a little bit playing
your legs or playing a pot or whatever so uh but buddy wants to say something first oh
and i'm sorry before that i do want to introduce our fourth member of this group this is jim
he's been our student for a number of years and um yeah he's there he's our beautiful
friend and uh so gina is with us too i want to give him that respect what were you going to
say buddy well um i'm absolutely in line with you on the bottom and the way to get to the bottom
as important as anything else is to listen thank you it's just as important to listen as it is to
play the bottom is the result of listening first listening and feeling okay so the simplest the simplest bottom that you can
listen to in here is your own heartbeat so i'm going to start with that as a bottom i
encourage you all to try just playing the bottom just close your eyes and let it let yourself
ride but realize that when you play bottom you are the thing that everybody's leaning on you
are the force that is holding everything up so you're not just sort of hanging out there
you know uh you are actually starting to have an awareness that you are the power right and that's
a such a good thing such a good thing you're not going to be alone here so we got these guys and
we're going to go ahead and get them started okay quick quick question would you mind if
um if someone wanted to unmute themselves would you would that be i don't know how
well it'll work on zoom but just so maybe uh no actually that won't work okay now it won't
work because their sound is going to come later than our sound and it's going
to and it's going to really um it's going to make it hard for us to
produce what we're producing got it got it um uh i'm going to experiment with
some other things later we will see yeah but yeah it doesn't really work here
okay so um so the heartbeat will just go you can try and play it is a little phrase you can play just try that okay driver uh together so okay now we're gonna keep going keep going ready up my very very good okay so what i want to say is
this is just just just just touching on the very corner of what can happen anybody anybody can
start a drum circle you don't have to have a drum circle facilitator like what i'm doing it helps
at the beginning but as long as you have that bottom going real steady then the rest of
people can experiment a little bit a little bit and uh play things that they create i'm going
to give you a very simple way of creating your own rhythm because the way i teach my first
graders and they are very good at picking this up real fast i would have to say even faster than
some adults is if you say it you can play it okay if you say it you can play it
so you can make up any word that you can repeat over and over a phrase a sentence
you repeat it over and over as long as it has a rhythm you can play with your hands with
your mouth to stand right so i can say a chicken neck right a chicken nut a chicken
neck a chicken nut a chicken see and i can say fresh plucked chicken wanna buy a chicken
fresh cloth chicken wanna buy a chicken fresh plug chicken wanna buy a chicken
fresh plucked chicken wanna buy a chicken you see so um i'm going to maybe see if
we can sing that together can you guys say louder all right so if you stay it you can play uh got a few more minutes maybe i just wanna absolutely if you want to take
about five more minutes then we'll go to q a i just want to show you a few instruments
that you can actually purchase that are pretty pretty inexpensive uh can
y'all see this is it backwards okay so i i made this handout for uh kids but it's
pretty nice uh you're welcome to get out your cell phone and take a snapshot of your screen i'll
hold it for another few seconds here uh if you want to take a picture of it but uh it it has
a lot of typical percussion instruments that you can buy for pretty cheap uh i don't know if
anybody does anybody want to take a picture put up your hand because i can't see if anybody is
like searching for their phone or something but in any case i'll put it up one more time right at
the very end if you want to take a picture of that but uh i just want to give some examples of how
to play a couple of instruments this instrument a lot of people probably know this instrument
it's a cow bell but it's a musical cowbell there are actually those that hang on cows uh but this
instrument has two basic sounds an open where you hold it real loose and you hit it like that you
don't want to hit it like that because if you do it'll eat your stick hit it flat and then it has
a sound up here and then you can take your finger and you can mute the bell so you can go you got
all those different sounds so you can just go this is the best if you're just
playing that that rules if you get off the train is going to be a wreck this is one of
the most powerful bottoms that anybody can play in a drum circle really excellent instrument
for people that want to lead a rhythm group hey how about um here is a a wood block got a
little hole in it that makes it hollow it sounds a lot like the pitting that we played earlier
in the show with waterbot from the forest region if you play it in the middle with your stick flat
kind of like that just on top you have a nice open sound if you hit the edges you have a higher sound so you got two
pitches kind of just like the kitten so these wood blocks are pretty
darn inexpensive very affordable um so that's a wood instrument the first was a
metal instrument and then of course the shaker and then of course you have these big bass
drums so there's sort of a range of sounds and timbers you can have and i encourage anybody
that's trying to get a drum circle going to have a little bit of peach metal shaker wood and
drums and of course your hands and your heart so i was going to say thank you so much
uh ko thank you to everyone thank you wadabah i'm going to share just a
powerpoint that we will end with too just a quick slide in case you want more
information about um what about and oops and um what he does and and ko
if i can get this to work here that has a lot of great information
again thank you so much if you want their information if you're interested
in getting an authentic cd of their music uh recorded in guinea west africa um again here
here's the information for that so again thank you so much if we can get just give a round
of applause to wadabah and ko ogawa and um and the other two gentlemen who are who
are assisting today it has been absolutely fantastic i think i can speak for for all
of clovis community college when i say that uh thank you so so much um it has been absolutely
amazing and i know we're running just a little short on time but we're i figure that we can go
into our about a 15-minute question and answer but before i do that i i do want to also give a
special thank you because the presentation was technically an hour and so uh ko and and wadabah
have generously donated this this half hour this extra half hour to us so um again thank you so
so much um so i'm going to stop sharing that and we are going to go to question and answer
and so if you do have a question um feel free to either raise your hand via the reaction button
like i just did at the very bottom of your screen or you can post it in the chat and i'm going to
go ahead and get started um yesterday or a couple days ago when we talked okay you had mentioned
that um and you had mentioned it a little bit during the presentation that the drumming of
wada ba is different than the healing circle and what kind of the differences are can you just
go a little bit into that sure um okay so um it's just an important distinction to make that
they're both rhythmic they both involve drums um but the the tradition of
african drumming is historic very specific sophisticated so it's important
to not call that jerome circle drumming i think because personally i think that that
culture deserves a hell of a lot of respect um and consideration and um we don't want to water
down any of that culture we want to praise it drum circle drumming on the other hand is free
it's made up it doesn't have the same confines that said it's also more sort of accessible to
people who know nearly nothing about drumming so it's a really good place to start to
become engaged with rhythm and to find a venue to feel that very first feeling
that magical wonderful feeling of being inside the music and feeling
that rhythm fully in your heart thank you so much absolutely and it i'm
glad that you're able to explain that a little bit further i know that you did that
during the during the presentation too um what are some of the and i know that this is
probably a whole presentation within itself what are some of the um the ways
that african drumming has influenced uh music in the united states specifically
oh my goodness both of us are laughing yes okay so i'll i'll try to i'll try to i'll try
to put it in a nutshell uh the nutshell version is um most of our most popular and
powerful and influential music in our american music history um
in the past i would say at least 80 years would not exist if it was not
for the influence of african music it just we wouldn't have anything we wouldn't have any of
our modern music none of it except maybe well pure folk music um you know we wouldn't have jazz blues
hip-hop rap r b um we wouldn't have any of that um we wouldn't have the rhythms that go behind them
uh see and i have to say that it's also important to acknowledge that those kinds of music are
not african music they're african-american um they are a a pure creation of americans because um you know the roots may have come
from africa but it was made here um i think that that the roots that i were talking about
earlier about um whether it's music that is something that people create together as a
community or that people create um as a performer audience kind of a thing the roots of african
music inside of our african-american music in the respect that it's something that the community
participates in that root is still very present in our african-american music and um i think
it really stems from african-american music in the african church because in the african church
everybody was doing it together so that i think that's really important to bring out that point
that because that thread is still there we we still feel like we can participate and it feels
good we need to participate we have a human need yes sir today you heard some incredible music
played by water and what about can't do that kind of solo unless the bottom is right he
calls it melody he can't hear the melody and came to my house and he had some classical
music turned up as loud as it goes beethoven and he was just in heaven and i asked him
how come you like that precipice he says i love the melon and that's that's
when you start tracing things back that african music if you don't have a melody you can't
move forward the same thing with classical music thank you so much i i and again i i recognize
that that is a big presentation within itself but i wanted to make sure that that we recognized
that and got that question and we do have another question from our chat um coming from from
michelle ko do you offer classes for families do you mentioned working with first graders if so
how is a family class different in terms of how you teach well uh to be honest with you i've never
we've never specifically taught a family but um we have taught private classes that were a
small group i mean they're sort of semi-private classes and yes we absolutely do we will
do we will adapt to any teaching situation that there is we have taught um individuals
we have taught small groups that that they they are constantly together after the fact
there's there's a particular group from la that comes up occasionally and they play together
down in l.a uh so yes yeah we can accommodate pretty much anything you know prisons uh youth
detention centers schools anything this coveted condition has forced us to do things a lot
differently and we are not going to let over stop us from passing on traditional african music
right on we will find a way yeah we'll find a way is that answer i think so yeah thank you
absolutely just call us call or text me i don't i'm not real good with the uh
the technology and i i don't do facebook well because i fall in and stay there
for hours and i can't afford that but you know a text an email is
perfect okay awesome thank you we're actually doing a really wonderful
apprenticeship program right now with the fellow that referred us to this particular event
because he couldn't do it um his name is dante he lives in the fresno inn for uh but he applied for
a grant and he is now what about his apprentice so him and a bunch of people come up kind of like
a family and we teach them together every uh every couple few weeks and that's going to happen
for the next year it's a wonderful wonderful thing thank you and that actually hit on uh
another question that was sent to me if you were interested in getting involved in learning african
drums what would be your suggestion to get started uh well to get started uh around here i mean
obviously i'm gonna say talk with us to take a class um but another thing is just to listen
to some african traditional music and get used to the sound and see how much you love it um
it's pretty raw it's pretty base it's it's real different than american music obviously but it's
the real thing um we have two wonderful cds again phone call text email uh we'll mail it to you the
cd it has the booklet as the words and the lyrics so getting familiar with traditional music see
spotify has some really nice tunes of mamadi keita is a really really good person
to listen to as is famous so if you guys are ready with pen and pencil or to
write this name down i can spell it mamadi is the same as my husband mamadi m-a-m amazon amazonerry
a amazon mary a d dog y kata is k-e-i-t-a you can find him on spotify uh family is a little
harder to find um but he is one of the great grand masters and and what about his master and my
master as well fahmadu is f a m like mary um oh those are like the best grandmasters of masters
and if you can find their music and listen to recordings you can just get an earful um when
i was studying with uh mamadi keta he said for all your practice time if you have
an hour of practice time you practice with your hands 40 minutes and you listen 20
minutes it's all good thank you so much and i do have one last question that i
have to ask will you perform on campus next year absolutely absolutely and um i i
i do want to i want to add one more thing um there's there's probably a lot of educators
out there that have a chance to hear this if you want to become a drum circle facilitator
yourself you don't have to be a awesome freaking musician you can still do it so i i can
also teach people how to facilitate drum service which is again different from traditional but it's
still rhythmic and it's so accessible to newbies really accessible a lot of the
people that have studied us studied the african music started in a
drum circle and then they wanted more thank you so so much again i really appreciate
you taking the time and again giving us an extra half hour with you i really really appreciate
it thank you so much if we can give just another round of applause it's been such a
wonderful presentation and such a wonderful um uh morning being able to to to listen to the
drumming to be able to interact ourselves and get in some questions to end off i again i am going to
share my screen so that way again you can see the contact information for both wadabah and ko and
again thank you so much i really appreciate it and again thank you from clovis thank
you patrick i appreciate the opportunity thank you so much everyone
this does conclude our event i really appreciate you showing up and
appreciate you um participating today and throughout all the events the events that
we've had this month um thank you again hey