Learning the Djembe

About 15 years ago, a young man in our local church body returned from a summer mission trip with a djembe, an African drum held between the knees, producing different tones depending on how you hit the head.  He played the drum softly, accompanying certain songs during worship.  Very cool, I thought to myself.

djembe

I had studied percussion for two brief years while in the 5^th and 6^th grades.  When my family moved out of state the next year, I speculated that the adjustment to the new school would take my full attention, and elected not to continue.  It was one of those decisions I would regret.  I had also discontinued the study of the saxophone after a month in the 4^th grade, an equally poor decision.  That was the extent of my music training.

A couple of years ago I decided that the djembe may be my ticket to re-entering music training in middle age.  It seemed as though it would be relatively easy to learn some rhythms and have fun with it.  I began to do some research as to what I needed to get.  When my wife and kids pooled their money and gave me a card at Christmas which read “for a djembe”, there was no turning back, and we bought one from our local music store.

One day while searching the internet, I stumbled onto the site of a young man from Singapore.  Shawn Kok, among other things, has put together videos teaching the use of the djembe to accompany small group worship.  His sweet spirit immediately gripped my attention, and I determined to follow his course of instruction to learn to play.  Here's one of the first videos I watched.

Shawn does not play the djembe in the traditional African way.  Instead, he plays it using methods that a drummer would use to play a traditional set of drums.  The rhythms are mostly built on 1/16^th notes.  This style, while not authentic to the djembe, suited my history with percussion and my musical tastes well.  I found the rhythms familiar and pleasant to my ear.

Shawn Kok

The depth of Shawn’s instruction made learning the rhythms a possibility even for this old dog, as long as I practiced.  I was especially pleased when I mastered a particularly difficult pattern. 

Then he presented one that brought my progression to a halt.  Not only was it difficult to get my hands to just play the beat, but the speed at which Shawn played it made my head spin.  I would play it over and over, night after night.  The progress was painfully slow. 

While looking at some of the comments from users of Shawn’s site, I found the question “how long does it take to master all of these beats”.  Shawn replied “a few months to a year, with regular practice.”  He added the comment “its just muscle memory”.

Muscle memory is a term for the process by which we learn certain skills by repetition.  Any musician or athlete is familiar with it.  It starts with consciously working through a task, in this case, playing a rhythm on a drum.  At first it must be performed very slowly, and in my case, with the aid of written music.  With each practice session, an attempt is made to increase the speed, with many mistakes accompanying the effort.  Eventually, I found that I was playing the beats much faster than I could read the music.

Then gradually, you find yourself playing the rhythm without consciously thinking about the progression of the beat.  It just begins to flow out.  The reason is that the brain has committed the beat to memory somewhere in its recesses.  At that point, the playing becomes almost effortless, and you can begin to focus on other things, such as nuances in the beat, or perhaps other music being played around you.  Eventually you learn to accompany, or so I hope.

Muscle memory is an amazing thing to me.  It is the same process that allows us to type, to ride a bike, or drive a car without much thought.  The process is the same as “wax on… wax off” from Karate Kid (the original).  Mr. Miyagi does muscle training with the unsuspecting Daniel by having him wax cars.  By the end of the task, Daniel is well on his way to responding to punches without putting much thought into it.

The thing that is most intriguing is how it seems to resemble the life of the Christian.

When we begin our walk with The Lord, we follow certain steps.  We learn the basics, and attempt to implement what we learn.  This process is difficult.  We make many mistakes.  Our hands do not do what our mind tells them to do.  Our mouth does not speak that which we know it should.  Our mind does not think the way we desire for it to think.  This is all very frustrating and full of our own effort.  But it is the path we all take.  At some point, we become frustrated with this approach.

It is AFTER this frustration that the door is open for a change to take place.  Perhaps not all at once, but at certain times, we find that our hands do what we desire for them to do.  Our voice speaks that which we know it should speak.  Our mind thinks on those things it should think.  However, it does not come out of a great effort on our part, rather it comes from another source.  It comes from the indwelling Christ.  At that point, it just flows out, just as those drum rhythms flow.

It is vital to understand the change which must take place.  The analogy of learning the djembe only works to a degree.  We are not talking about practicing the “Christian life” until it becomes second nature.  This isn’t a diligence to keep at it until we finally become master over our own flesh by training and repetition. 

But there is one thing that must be repeated over and over.  That one thing is a constant reminding that I am totally dependent on The Lord to live any semblance of a godly life. No amount of practice will train my own flesh to live godly.  Instead, MY life must be replaced by HIS life.   John 1:14 says “And the Word became flesh”.  John spoke that of Christ.  He was the embodiment of the Written Word of God. He walked perfectly in the ways of God while here on earth in bodily form.  It only follows that as we allow Christ to live in us, in our bodily form, the fruit of that will be, at least in part, men and women living according to that same Word of God. 

I don’t know where my djembe playing will lead. But I do know this. After getting through the early stages, and as my hands begin to do things they couldn’t before, I almost become a spectator to the music, and think to myself “I can’t believe I once found this so difficult.”

First appeared in the August, 2010 edition of the Manna. http://readthemanna.org