What is a Djembe Drum & How Do You Play It?

Series Summary

The djembe is a large, goblet-shaped drum that is either skin or synthetic covered and played with bare hands. The drum is a membranophone, meaning its covering in a shell, usually rawhide. Its origins trace back to West Africa, where it is a monumental part of the culture and musical history. While the djembe drum has found popularity in the Western world as a part of a drum circle, its intended ensemble use is with a dunun drum and bells. Djembe soloists or lead drummers will beat rhythms to accent and accompany dancers, signaling changes in dance steps as well as adapting to the dance. For this reason, it's important for djembe drummers who want to use the instrument in the traditional fashion to learn a variety of rhythms and beats popular with African dance. Playing a drum with bare hands might seem like an easy task, but when the musician is required to play, predict and adjust to dancers and other musicians, it becomes a little harder. If you want to learn how to play the djembe, learn for free online from one of our experts who will introduce you to the djembe drum and how its played.

In this free online video series learn how to play the djembe from expert djembe drummer Aaron Moon. Watch as he demonstrates djembe rudiments such as the single stroke, double stroke, flam, and flam tap; and how to create the bass tone. Learn also how to use sticks, change the pitch and tone of the djembe, how to manipulate sound, and how to store your djembe.

This series is an Equilibrio Films production.

Video Transcript

" Hello! My name is Aaron Moon and I’m here today on behalf of expertvillage.com. I’ll be discussion the instrument the Djembe I’m a percussionist and the Djembe is one of my favorite instruments to play. It’s a hand drum unlike a drum for a drum set, snare drum, floor tom; this drum you play with your hands as such this drum originated from the country Guinea in Africa traditionally it had an animal skin head. So different from this fiber skin head which is synthetic you can see that this is a little beat up from wear and tear. This is a Remo brand head and it also has kind of a wine glass or goblet shape to it, it has a rubber base at the bottom to keep from cracking up the sides and as you can see this is pretty scuffed up from years of use. This drum has tuning pegs on the side these are little lugs and this is the rim the lugs connect to the rim and these pegs have to do with tuning drums, so you can tighten and loosen them accordingly to the pitch you want the drum to produce."