Category Archives: Music & Video
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 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…)
Drumroots Youtube Channel (Video)
For those who don’t yet know, Drumroots our very own Youtube channel. Here you can find videos of some of our best Tanante concerts, videos of other groups from our Drumroots Live events, videos of our travels to West Africa with footage of traditional village festival, African performance groups and much more. Follow the link to our Youtube channel, check out the videos and don’t forget to subscribe, we’ve got a whole bunch of as yet unreleased videos of our experiences over years that we’ll now be putting out to share with you regularly. (more…)
Tanante with Sidiki Dembele at The Hilton’s Cloud 23 for KLM-Air France-Delta
As part of an expansion, opening 17 new global routes in 2011, including Cape Town, Buenos Aires and Xiamen, the Manchester Airport branch of KLM-Air France-Delta, hosted an event and trade show, held in the prestigious heights of Cloud 23 bar of the Manchester Hilton Hotel building to which they invited Drumroots to deliver rather special performance…
Tanante to Perform at The Mamady Keita Weekend 2012.
This coming February the UK will see a return visit from a very special West African djembe fola, none other than Mamady Keita! It’s been a long time since he’s been on these shores and it’s a very special opportunity to learn djembe and dundun from Mamady, who is now widely regarded as one of the greatest teachers of traditional djembe music in the world. Organised by the good people down south at Djembeschool, this full weekend event will be hosted in Bristol, February 2012. Held at DMAC (Dance, Music, Arts Collective), the weekend will consist of daytime 2.5 hour workshop sessions on Saturday and Sunday pitched at intermediate and advanced levels. On the Saturday night there will be a full performance programme with a line up including Tolo Ko Tolo, Hamana, Swedish dancer Sara Galan and our very own Tanante with Iya Sako. (more…)
Proceeds from Drumroots Live £950.80 go to MSF! (Photos and Video)
It’s nearly a month since Drumroots Live, held at Manchester’s fine venue: The Platt Chapel. This charity event held was to raise money and give all proceeds to Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) for their work in helping bring aid to people affected in the current East-African crisis. For those who didn’t know or missed this event, a short recap:
As you no doubt know there has been and is a huge amount of difficulty and problems in East Africa. These problems are not only the cause of on-going conflict and mismanagement, but the addition of one of the worst droughts in the countries history. Though the relatively recent rains may have eased the drought at least, the problems continue and the on-going, compassionate work of groups and organisations bringing much needed aid to the affected areas are essential. (more…)
After Drumroots Live. Thanks to all involved
As the dust settles around the Platt Chapel, we able to look back at last Friday’s Drumroots Live event with satisfaction that all is done and that the event was a great success. With a descent turn out, spectacular performances and huge effort from all the bands and artists present and a very moving presentation by Aisha from Medecins sans Frontieres, we were able to build a buzzing vibe in the space whilst still remembering why we were there. With the turn out alone we have raised a fair sum but with the many raffle tickets sold we, together have surely amounted a sum that can really make a difference to some people in East Africa, Watch this space for an official amount raised and to be sent to MSF very soon when we’ve totted it all up. (more…)
Drumroots Live! Raffle Prizes Announced; WIN FLIGHTS TO AFRICA, A PRO DJEMBE, CASE OF WINE AND MORE….
With just a week to go until Drumroots Live at Manchester’s Platt Chapel things are heating up and starting to get very exciting. The already amazing venue is waiting for us to turn it to a very special space for a one off event, the super strong line-up is unique and powerful, with a broad mix of talents and styles, we’re expecting a full turn out (so get down early for music from 6.15pm) and with a little input from ourselves and the kind work and donations of our friends in the African drumming scene, the raffle is looking so good that it’d be worth coming down to Drumroots Live for that alone!
Prizes will Include:…. (more…)
Drumroots to the Kontaani Workshop Group: FINALLY! (Video)
This has been a long time in coming, and much looked forward to! We’ve known Marie and Debs who organise and run Kontaani for quite some time now, firstly though our workshops and the festival network, but increasingly for their massive support for what we do, attending many of our events, workshops and private lessons, but they most notably stand out for their huge enthusiasm for this music on a scale on a par with our own and it’s something we rarely see. Over all this time getting to know them, and more recently some of the other Kontaani team we’ve talked and enthused much over the idea of going along to lead a workshop at one of the regular Kontaani public workshops. Having found a date that we’re all free, last night Jamie and I travelled up to quiet and peaceful Langley Village Hall, above Macclesfield to deliver a Drumroots Djembe and Dundun workshop and to temporarily make Langley not quite so peaceful! With Marie’s worries that many of their enthusiastic regulars were unable to make it, we were expecting a fairly small class but were happily surprised to receive a room full in which there wasn’t space for many more. (more…)
