Friday August 26
This week has been filled with lots of experiences again! I went to my first drum Ghana drumming practice with Antoinette, the female drumming master who is I have been talking about prior. She has a drumming group call DrumGhana. I was so relieved that she came to pick me up this week to go there because I wasn’t sure exactly where it was.
The first day there were about maybe eight people there. There was drumming and dancing. It is always drumming and dancing, never just one, because the drums accompany the dancing. On Tuesday and the rest of the week there were more people there (maybe 13 or so) so they were a lot more dancers and I could really get a sense of what they were doing. They are also freaking good! It’s hard to not watch them while I’m drumming. But I always have to watch Antoinette because she or someone is playing my part with me most of the time. I’m playing a supporting rhythm that doesn’t change. I mostly have to watch for changes and endings so I don’t play out of turn. The drummers are also amazing. It’s clear I’m the weakling, lol. But I’m OK with that. I just try to stay with them and not play out of turn. Everyone is very nice. I’m trying to learn everyone’s name. They have all given me their Christian name because they think it’s easier for me to say, which they are probably right. Pretty much no one speaks English – they all speak the local language which is Twi – so Antoinette talks to them in Twi and me in English. But I can tell that they’re very warm and welcoming people and I’m excited to be in this group. There’s a performance on Saturday at this festival that’s happening in town so I’m going to play in that. So I’m going to go do all the practices this week which are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from about 4-6.
It is so amazing to be here playing with these folks. THIS is why I came here! I am soaking up every minute of being in these drum/dance practices. I will hopefully get some video of the dancers and the entire performance that happens on Saturday. But this is a snippet of the practices from the week.
Here are a few pics and one initial video that I took. It's supposed to be for me to practice, but I wanted to share it here so you can hear what we do!
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