Even better than Lion King...

I went to go see the Drummers of Burundi on November 2, 2006. The entire evening was definitely an interesting experience. The night started with walking into the auditorium and hearing the sounds of drums. My friend and I weren’t sure what was going on so we ventured into the lobby where different people were performing in a drum circle. The idea was to get the audience into the mood and it sure did the trick. As the concert neared, we got more and more excited and found our way to our seats in the balcony of the IU Auditorium.

The concert started with the Mombasa Party group. This group consisted of only 4 performers. They all played different percussion instruments and there was some singing. There were also some interesting native instruments like the tashkota, which is like a table-top banjo. Interestingly enough, when I searched this word on Google and Wikipedia.com, the only time this word came up was when the Drummers of Burundi were being talked about. This leads me to wonder if the group essentially invented this instrument. The music that was played was divided into six different sections. Each song had a different title that was to indicate the type of music that was going to be played. All of the music was more “flowing” than the drumming in the lobby and very easy-going. My favorite piece was the last one entitled “All Jambo”. Jambo means hello in Swahili which is a language spoken in the native lands of these peoples. I particularly enjoyed this song because the beat was really fun to follow and the words were very familiar as they were, Hakuna Matata.

After the Mombasa group played, there was a brief intermission and then the Drummers of Burundi came to the stage. Literally, they came into the auditorium by the side door with their drums on their heads and played up to the stage. There were twelve drummers in all, all wearing red, green and white. Once they got onto the stage, they assembled into a semi-circle with a single, more decorated drum in the middle of the circle. Drummers would take turns going into the middle and continuing with the beat or creating a new one. Sometimes there would be two drummers in the middle and that would create much more excitement. Three of the drums would essentially do a base beat and the other drums would all be in-sync with a different beat. Along with the drumming were some fancy footwork and hand work. Many times the drummer in the middle of the semi-circle would “wrap the stick around their head”. The way they would do it would make it seem like they were actually wrapping it around like a rope, but that just shows how good they were. One of the funny moments of the evening was when one of the drummers accidentally lost control of his stick and it flung into the orchestra pit. I thought that he would just get a new one from back stage, but eventually he climbed down into the pit and got it himself. The performance ended with them group coming out the same way they came in. One by one they put their (what looked like very heavy) drums on their heads and headed off the stage.

This performance was definitely one I had never witnessed before. I’ve heard this kind of drumming on CD before, but to see it on stage in real life was definitely an experience I will remember for a while. Seeing the group come in with the insanely heavy drums on their heads gave me a new found appreciation for carrying things on my back and complaining. Hopefully I will have a chance to see more of this group or similar groups in the future.

This is the Musical Performance Visit Project.