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Summary: How to play a Kinkini African drum; get professional tips and advice on playing traditional West African percussion instruments in this free music lesson video.
Michael Markus is the owner of Magbana Drum & Dance in New York City, where he is a professional performer and teacher of intermediate and beginner African Drumming. His other...read more
"MAN: Here I am with [PH] kenkeni drum, the smallest of the dundun family. And, again, when holding the stick, you want to be relaxed. You want to grab it with your thumb and your index finger and gently let the stick move. Also, we use a smaller stick with the kenkeni because the diameter of this drum is smaller and a big stick like for the dundun will kind of stifle the sound. So this one. They call kenkeni because a lot of the rhythm, sometimes go "kenkeni." Often, the kenkeni drum plays a short repetitive pattern, the [PH] sangban and dundun do all the variations, the kenkeni does not do any variations. Here's an example of a couple different rhythms. You could have that. You could have this. Many, many different rhythms."