Category Archives: African Drumming Workshops
New Drumroots Pro Djembes and Skins from Guinea In Stock, Order Yours Now!
It’s all go in the Drumroots world at the moment! Plenty of workshops and a few gigs coming up but on top of all that we have received a new batch of pro djembes! Our reliable friends in Guinea Conakry have excelled themselves again and produced an even better batch of high quality Lenke djembes. As ever carved by the infamous Lye Konate and built to our exacting standards; the best quality wood with intricate and beautiful carving, ring shelves and tyres on the bottom. At present, these drums are just shells and waiting to be skinned by our pro drum skinners. We have the best quality materials ready to build them up; hairless goat skins from Guinea, professional djembe specific rope from our friends at Drumskull in The USA and the finest steel for building rings. With our drum skinning skills these djembes will build up to be some of the best available on these shores! (more…)
Drumroots African Drumming Workshop for Morris Court
John and Theresa from the Drumroots team recently enjoyed running workshops for the people at Irwell Valley’s, Morris Court, Fallowfield. The residents at Morris Court with care support on hand held a summer garden party and we at Drumroots were invited to provide some entertainment by bringing people together with a few short African Drumming sessions. As well as the residents and support workers based at Morris Court, also there were other local Irwell Valley staff and local MP John Leech (Liberal Democrat). At the event there was a barbeque, raffle and of course our workshops. The short drumming sessions where open to all and with a little encouragement all the seats in the drum circle where filled. (more…)
Drumroots Team Building Workshop for Bio-Rad
We recently enjoyed being a part team building event for the international company Bio-Rad. The annual meeting for the UK branch of Bio-Rad was hosted at the extremely luxurious setting of Shrigley Hall Hotel in Cheshire. We were brought in at the end of their first day of hard meetings and discussions to give the Bio-Rad staff some fun and interactive activities to help them relax and unwind. All the staff were keen and enthusiastic to get their teeth into the session. We had rather longer than unusual for corporate workshop and this enabled us to really take our time in introducing the staff on how to play a djembe, play games with their new found skill and eventually work up to a full piece of African music. (more…)
Drumroots Team Building Workshop for Common Purpose at Z-Arts
The Drumroots workshop team recently ran a workshop for some forty students who were about to complete a course in leadership ran by an organisation called Common Purpose. The workshop was held by Z Arts (formally Zion Arts Centre) as part of their programme to host a growing number of team building and corporate workshops. (more…)
Report: Kontaani Camp Weekender 2012 (Video)
It’s taken a good few days to find the time to do a write up of this event, but the happy memories are as clear as yesterday as this weekend was something special. For some time, the Drumroots team have contemplated the idea of putting together a weekend away in a beautiful place, centred around West African drumming education and performance, but have never enough drive to get it together. Our friends at Kontaani, based in Macclesfield have shown us how it’s done! (more…)
Kontaani Drum Weekend; Drumroots Workshops and Tanante Performance
Our good friends of the Kontaani group have organised a whole weekend of drumming workshops and performances. The workshops (some of which will be run by us!) will be pitch at different levels to suit all. On Saturday night there will be a full program of entertainment with performances including Kontaani’s own performance group and Tanante with special guest artists Iya Sako and Sens Sagna. For non-drummers there will be a whole host of other activities to look forward to. We’re really looking forward to this event and it’ll be a great weekend away for all. For more info get in touch or contact the Kontaani crew directly.
Friday, May 25 – Sunday, May 27 2:00 pm – 2:00 pm (more…)
Drumroots African Drumming Course at The Zion Arts Centre; Performance Showcase (Video)
We have now completed our six week African drumming course at The Zion Arts Centre! The course was oversubscribed with enthusiastic students of a very broad range of experience and ability. This presented us with one of the most challenging but eventually rewarding courses we have ever run. With a combination of hard work by our students, and us carefully selecting the pieces we chose to teach, as well as how far to push our students, and putting them on parts where they seemed most suited and comfortable; the music progressed well and eventually we ended up a tight and polished performance group just in time! (more…)
Drumroots Performance; African Drumming Course Showcase + Tanante Gig at The Zion Arts Centre
As the end of our current six week African Drumming course at The Zion Arts Centre draws near, we are honing the skills of the participating students for their end performance. Thus far we have worked very hard to bring out the very best from a mixed group and tried to put people in the best places to produce an exciting end performance spectacle. The group will appear in the foyer/bar space of The Zion Arts centre to showcase what they have learnt to friends, family and West African music lovers. Their performance will be followed by a short show by our own performance group Tanante. The whole event will be free to all to come along and enjoy, so please get down and show support for our hard working students!
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Drumroots African Drumming Workshop School Assembly (Video)
We thought it high time we got a video showing an example of the sort of thing that we do in schools up online for you to see. As well as simply delivering workshops in schools we can focus the education to work towards an end performance in a school assembly or after school showcase. This not only helps focus children’s minds (with the thought of the rest of the school or their mum’s and dad’s coming to see them) but it also allows the whole school, teachers and family’s to benefit from a class or year group’s leaning activity.
Here is a short clip of a school assembly showing what even very young children can achieve in a very short amount of time (in this case 1.5 hours) and how we can help them bring it to share with the rest of the school. (more…)
Back From Training with Sipa in Touba Kabira, Senegal (Video)
Just a quick note to say that we the Drumroots team are back from an all too brief stay and bit training time in Senegal. We returned again to the southern region of Cassamance to stay at our second home; Touba Kabira, the beautiful guest house in Abene belonging to our good friend and Tanante dancer Sens Sagna. Here we fitted in as much time as we could to study with our teacher Sipa (Mohammed Sylla) and his group Wassalon. We’ve stayed here many times now, never fail to have a good time and feel well looked after and always look forward to returning.
Ever dreamt of traveling to West Arica to staying this beautiful region? Here you can either learn djembe music (with our highly recommended teacher, Sipa), or the study traditional drumming of that region, Segrouba or even simply to escape to the jungle to relax this idyllic Atlantic beach town. You might also be interested to see the infamous Abene festival, if so why not step just outside the main centre of Abene and stay at Touba Kabira? (more…)
