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Percussion Orchestra Spoken Hand
Percussion Orchestra
Spoken Hand
Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra230 Vine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106This project is partially supported by a grant from Pennsylvania Perform-ing Arts on Tour, a program devel-oped and funded by the Vira I. Heinz Endowment; the William Penn Foun-dation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the Pew Charitable Trusts; and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.
This brochure was supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.www.spokenhand.org
Send email to [email protected] or call 215-923-5678 or 215-990-7277 for more information.
Educational Brochure
Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra (Spoken Hand for short) links the past and the present, the sacred and the sec-ular with a symphonically textured fusion of traditional and contemporary drum-ming and choral compositions to forge an entirely original realm of sound.
Drums in Melody
Spoken Hand is a traditional hand drumming ensemble which unifies four percussion batteries into one distinct voice: North Indian tabla, Afro-Cuban bata, Brazilian samba and West Afri-can djembe.
Education Workshops
The ensemble offers a variety of programs that are ide-al for the concert hall or the classroom, and appeal to a learning audience of all ages and levels of experience. We encourage educators and programmers to contact us. We are happy to work with you to design a program that fits your needs.
To discuss long term residencies and programming plans call 215-923-5678 or 215-990-7277. You can also send email to: [email protected].
I. FULL ENSEMBLE AUDITORIUM PRESENTATION90 minutes * All Ages * All levels of ExperienceThis engaging program features a high-energy perfor-mance, followed by a demonstration that introduces the audience to each of the four batteries, their unique instru-ments and sonic qualities, and the cultural history of drum-ming in each tradition. A question and answer session fol-lows the presentation.
II. SINGLE BATTERIE CLASS OR RESIDENCY90 minutes * All Ages * All levels of experience In an interactive, in-depth classroom setting, participants are exposed to the various players and instruments of one batterie, learning about the music and history of that tra-dition. Students explore making and hearing music with company members. They learn the rhythms and textures of each instrument and how this batterie fits into the en-semble in its entirety.
Education Workshops
III. MASTER CLASS / WORKSHOP90 minutes * Intermediate to Advanced drumming studentsThis workshop is offered for percussion students and perform-ers. The program allows participants to experience the thrill of playing in an ensemble and to learn specific techniques of each tradition under the guidance of the batterie leader.
To discuss long term residencies and programming plans call 215-923-5678 or 215-990-7277. You can also send email to: [email protected].
More than RhythmLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Hands on multicultural experience
• Compositional material from Spoken Hand repertoire as well as compositions that manifest during the teaching process
• Rudimentary playing techniques
• The dynamics of ensemble playing
• Traditional chants and rhythmic recitations from the four cultures that Spoken Hand represents
ParticipateIf you want to bring Spoken Hand to your school or institution, significant support grants may be available to presenters through the PennPAT program.
Call 215-496-9424 or go to www.pennpat.org for more information.
What is a Batterie?
Bata
It is the French word for a drumming sec-tion. Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra is organized into four batteries: Afro-Cuban bata, Brazilian samba, North Indian tabla, and West African djembe.
AFRO-CUBAN BATA: The bata drum orig-inated in the Yoruba empire (a region of the country now called Nigeria) and later traveled to Cuba and the United States. It is used in Yoruba ceremonial music. The rhythms are directed to the Orishas, deities of the Yoruba religion. Each of the drum-mers traditionally belonged to the sacred order of Anya. The bata batterie has three drums, each with two heads: okonkolo (the child), a small drum which keeps the pulse; itotelle (the father) carries melody and an-swers calls; lya (the mother) plays the calls and solos and is the largest drum. The cajon drums are also played by the batterie. This family consists of the tumba, segunda and quinto. They were originally wooden fish crates and were played on the waterfront by the dockworkers. The members of the bata batterie are Ishmael Jackson, John Wilkie, and Kenneth Fauntleroy.
WEST AFRICAN DJEMBE: The djembe is a West African wooden drum played largely on the coastal areas that includes present day Mali, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea. These countries were once a part of the old Mali Empire hundreds of years ago. The djembe shape originated from the mortar in which grain was pounded in African villages. It is thought to have originated in Mali and was played for religious ceremonies. The Malenke people of Guinea and in particular the Ballet African and National Dance Troupe of Guinea are credited with popularizing the djembe in the West. Essential to the djembe batterie are the three low register drums played with sticks that carry the melodic foundation. The kenkeni is a small double-headed drum also made of wood and is accompanied by a bell. It is the timekeeper of the ensemble and covers the high tone. The sangba is a slightly larger drum that has a profile similar to the kenkeni. It covers the mid-range. The jun jun is the bass drum of the ensemble and covers the lowest register. It is often made from a 55 gallon metal can. Members of the djembe batterie are Daryl Kwasi Burgee, Steve Jackson, and Omar Harrison.
Djembe
BRAZILIAN SAMBA: The most popular form of music and dance in Brazil is the samba. Derived from semba, a musical tradition from the southern African country Angola, samba was originally introduced into Brazilian culture by enslaved Africans and evolved over many years into several regional traditions played today throughout the country. Spoken Hand’s samba batte-rie is grounded in a number of these traditions. Sam-ba Batucada is typically played during the carnivals in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The music and dance are part of a lavish cultural celebration featuring multi-per-son “samba schools”, adorned in elaborate costumes and ornamentation. Typically played in groups of sev-eral hundred drummers, this style of samba features
an eclectic mix of instruments: the agogô (double bell), apito (whistle), caixa de guerra (snare drum), surdo (bass drum), tamborim (small frame drum), chocalho/ganza (shaker), cuica (friction drum), reco-reco (scraper), and the repinique (high tom drum). Bloco Afro is a style of popular reggae-like samba rhythm, which developed in the northeastern state of Bahia during the 1970’s to honor African heritage and history. It was used as a tool to fight social injustice in Brazilian society and typically features crackling grooves on the repinique, caixa, and timbau (tall hand drum), and running bass lines on the surdo. Samba De Roda is a rural circle dance form, ac-companied by call and response singing, set to the ata-baque (conga), pandeiro (tambourine), agogô, and hand claps. Capoeira is a martial art/dance form also accom-panied by call and response song. Originally practiced by enslaved Africans to develop fighting skills and agility for self defense, the music is played with the berimbau/caxixi (bow and basket rattle), pandeiro, atabaque, reco-reco and agogô. Ijexá is a secular and religious rhythm derived directly from the Afro-Brazilian religion Candom-blé. Instruments include the agogô, atabaque and xe-kerê (beaded gourd rattle). Various wood blocks, gongs, whistles, rattles made of seeds, pods and nutshells, and the pau-de-chuva (rain stick), as well as other small per-cussion instruments are used to simulate the sounds of the rain forest in the samba tradition. The members of the samba batterie are Alex Shaw, Joseph Bryant, and Ron Howerton.
Samba
NORTH INDIAN TABLA: Tabla consists of two tunable drums covered with goatskin heads. The higher pitched drum has a wooden shell and is called tabla (or dayan). The low register drum has a shell commonly made of copper, brass or clay and is called baya (or bayan). Tabla (descendant of the much older two-headed pakhawaj), are the predominant drums of the North Indian (Hindustani) classical music tradition. The rhythms of this vast tradition have evolved over 4000 years from the temples to the royal courts and to the concert stage. Tabla normally accompanies instrumentalists, vocalists and dancers of both classical and folk styles, but over the past fifty years has also been played as a solo instrument. Perhaps the most lyrical
Tablaof all hand drums, tabla has an oral language all its own. Each of the more than fifteen differ-ent strokes has its own corresponding Sanskrit syllable. There are innumerable talas (rhythmic cycles) in the North Indian music system. Just as melodies are made up of notes, talas are made up of many bols (strokes). Students of tabla spend years studying and practicing with a guru of the tradition in order to gain mastery of the instrument. Members of the tabla batte-rie are Lenny Seidman, Radha Marinelli, and Mike Nevin.
