Percussion Workshop

I had no internet last week so I have a lot to catch up on with my blog :/ On Tuesday last week we had a percussion workshop with a guy called Dave from Jabba Jabba Jembe (see his website here). We had it from 9.45am until 2.40pm, so we got to do loads of stuff. When Dave arrived we helped him to bring in his drums from his van...he had really cool colourful bags that they drums were in. Then he showed us how to play the drum properly. You use the palms of your hands with your four fingers together and your thumbs sticking out. There were loads of different types of drums, all different sizes. One was called the jembe and it was the main drum. There were bass drums too and other drums I didn't know the name of. He also had loads of hand percussion instruments. Some were made out of gourds. We played loads of rhythms and we all had the chance to try out every drum - it was really cool. At the end we watched a video called Foli on Youtube..you can see it here. It's about jembe druming in Africa. We also watched a video on Stomp...a grup of people who use every-day items (like sweeping brushes and basketballs) to make percussive sounds...it was sooo cool! It was a really good day...when all of us were playing together the sound was amazing (and really loud!). I'd love to learn how to play the jembe drums properly some day. :)