Keeping The Pulse Drumming, Dancing Classes Get Students Into A Rhythm
“Gaka-gudu-gata” thundered the circle of seven Djembe drums.
“Dat-dat dun dat-dat” Bret Smith tapped on the short bell attached to his DounDoum drum, while he kept time on a bass drum with his other hand.
Instructor Larry Baer leaned into the circle, listening intently to the pulse of the Sunnu, an African rhythm.
The eight drummers were part of an all-day dance and drum workshop hosted by the Spokane dance group Malidoma!
The group invited Baer, a dance and drum professor at northern California’s Chico State University, to teach a weekend workshop after hearing him lecture several years ago in Stevens County, dancer Serri Bentley said.
Baer has been studying the drums with masters from Africa, Haiti and the United States for seven years. Saturday he conducted four African and Haitian classes - two on the drums and two in dancing - at the Metropolitan School of Ballet. The classes continue today at the school on 820 W. Sprague.
“In African music, it’s the pulse,” Baer told the drum class. “That’s what’s important, not the quarter note. They don’t understand the quarter note.”
Smith was one of the students who turned out for the afternoon drum class to learn to play the sounds of the Sunnu on their Djimbes (pronounced “jim-bay”) and DounDoums.
“My family is tone deaf,” said Smith, who has been playing Djimbe for a couple of years. “They told me to quit banging on the table my whole life. Now I’ve got something to bang on with a purpose.”
Smith volunteered for a tough assignment Saturday afternoon. He learned to play the DounDoum because the group needed somebody to keep the pulse. After struggling for a while, he was able to pick up the rhythm during the two-hour session.
“That’s what I want to work on because once you understand the pulse, then you get the rest,” he told Baer.
The afternoon dance class, which concluded just before the drum class, drew 15 or so dancers who shook their shoulders, swayed their hips and tapped their feet. Their bodies glistened and sweat dripped from their brows as they danced their way through four lines in the ballet studio, slowly working their way from the back of the room to the front.
“It’s very earthy, very real and very rhythmic,” said Bentley, who had just completed the dance class.
Baer started dancing a decade ago. While living in New York he was able to study African dance from some of the best dancers in the world.
“It gets you going,” Baer said. “When I first encountered African dance, I thought I was a great dancer.
“I tried an African dance class and I was exhausted after 10 or 15 minutes. The energy required is so high. My response was ‘I want this.’ To feel this alive, that was the hook.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo