My Brush with Illness
I first picked up a djembe in 1998 at a Guitar Center. It was a 12" Remo, with a synthetic shell and head. It sounded pretty sharp and also had a bass tone, and didn't cost too much. I took it to one of a growing number of drum circles, which were in the middle of a popularity boom, and began banging away with all the other drummers, including stoned neo-hippies, middle-aged new-agers, and African drumming fanatics. Almost all had djembes, the goblet-shaped hand drum from western Africa.

Not long after, I found a wood-and-goatskin djembe that had been made by a studio djembe drummer and drum teacher from Bamako Mali. It was the hit of the drum circle for a while. I took some lessons from the maker and learned a few complicated rhythms. I was so excited about djembes, I researched them and even produced a website detailing their history, construction, and a photo sequence with instructions for reheading them.

Then, one night it hit me. I was walking with my djembe to a weekly drum circle near Sea World in San Diego when I heard a beautiful sound supplying a warm, woody tone to the swarm of tinny, pat-patting djembes. I thought to myself, "Myself, that's a beautiful djembe. I want one like that." When I arrived at the circle, I saw that I had been hearing the wonderful full sound of a conga, sore thumb in the djembe orgy. The realization hit me: these poor souls are all the victims of mass hypnosis. The ring of drummers that night suddenly resembled the worshippers of a cult, eyes staring blankly ahead while their arms pumped up and down, producing an aimless, undulating cacophony.

I subsequently sold my djembe to a friend and haven't had much use for them since. Why? Why am I writing this indictment of a harmless little drum? Because I've never liked fashion trends that turn people into sheep, especially if that conformist behavior stifles creativity and prevents people from exploring the rest of the world excluded from the fad. I also feel the merits of djembes have been exaggerated. I think there are wonderful, even better in my opinion, drums out there that are being ignored in the wake of the djembe bandwagon.

What's Wrong: The Drum
One of the features of a djembe that is most cited by its users is its range and versatility. It produces a high, cracking snap and a full, deep bass, both from the same drum. While this is true, and the drum's designers should be admired, one of the limitations of the drum is that is has very little midrange. The high end is tinny and lacks fullness. It has no character and sounds more metallic than woody. That's a shame because many of these drums are made at the expense of rare African hardwoods, trees sacrificed for a yuppie's entertainment at a California drum circle. The bass is impressive for a drum its size, but once again, it lacks timbre. Because it is so mellow, it gets lost in a drum group. The best you can hope for is a kind of low, indirect humming.

The djembe, despite what its supporters say, is not particularly versatile. Because of the playing style, paper-thin head, and the lack of midtones and fullness at the high end, it would not be the best instrument to play, say, Japanese taiko, Indonesian gemelan, Brazilian samba batucada, Indian ragas, and Afro-Cuban rumba. The drum fits the style of music it was designed for and lacks many of the features that make other drums appropriate for their native styles.

What's Wrong: The Rhythms (Clipart Drumming)
Mande (or Mandinke) is a culture in the Sahel region of central west Africa, including Mali, Ghana, The Ivory Coast, and Senegal. The drumming tradition includes traditional rhythms played for specific occasions, such as harvest festivals, initiations, and receptions for the return of heroic warriors. Often, these sessions were played on six drums: three djembes and three dununs. The dununs were traditionally played by three separate drummers and produced a bass pattern frequently heavily syncopated. Two of the djembes played interlocking repetitive patterns, while the lead played improv inspired by the dancers, who are always a necessary element.

Later, Mande drummers and dancers toured Europe in folkloric shows, called Les Ballets Africains. The rhythms were played in short sets to fit with mainstream European tastes. The three dununs were normally played together by one drummer (two fewer plane tickets and salaries). Today, when Westerners learn Mande rhythms, they are most often learning watered-down, popularized versions of these performances, quite divorced from their original purposes and playing styles. See A Case Against Clipart Drumming

In drum circles, the djembe players attempt to play these rhythms, sometimes to the exclusion of anything else. The main problem is they are difficult, specific rhythms with very particular patterns. They are very difficult for people to join if they have not spent significant time learning them or have no interest in them. They have become rhythms of exclusion, rather than inclusion.

The drummers at circles who insist on playing them one after the other are focusing on a small, narrow world of percussion performance. If they try to play something outside that genre, and they are usually lost. This limitation is mostly a product of imitation and not freeing oneself for genuine, personal, creative expression. The Mande musicians that they attempt to copy had developed their own voice, their own expression. But the imitators put little of themselves into their playing. What could be an art form instead is clipart.

The final problem with playing these rhythms at drum circles is that the rhythms themselves are being trivialized and corrupted into Western society. They were once played for religious and community celebrations. They were sacred. Each was performed not by young kids who want to have fun with their hobby, but by practitioners of an ancient art only handed down in families of a specific social class, called jeli or griots. It was a serious business, not a weekend lark.

What's Wrong: The Playing Style
How often have I seen people new to drum circles or other drumming events bring their djembes—it's 90% of the time a djembe—and want to join in. Someone inevitably comes over to the and tries to teach them how to hit a djembe to produce "tones", "slaps", and "bass". The drummer has no idea how to produce a rhythm, and they are being instructed how to hit one particular drum with a specific set of sounds. I think what the instructor fails to realize is that rhythm is a pattern of silent moments between sounds, not the sounds themselves. You can make perfect tones, slaps, and bass hits and have no idea how to play a rhythm. But if you can play a rhythm, you can find your own way to make a variety of sounds on any instrument, whether it's a drum, guitar body, a tabletop, or a matchbox.

Instead, I watch these poor novices struggle for hours at drum circles trying to play the hits correctly (usually on the instructions of some drum circle regular who is regurgitating what some other drum circle regular taught him four weeks before). It would have been more productive for them to practice playing on tempo, blending with the general rhythm, and, most importantly, listening to what's going on.

And, like in the rhythm section above, the drummers who incessantly play Mande rhythms are doomed to stay in one small corner of the rhythm world. They get stuck on the playing techniques, to the point where they comically try to play all drums in the same manner. A byproduct of this is the habit of Mande-style drummers to play all music forms with the same rhythmic pattern. This pattern is notorious to other drummers. The djembe drummer leans forward and starts paddling their drum head with a cascade of 16th notes with very little variation between them.

Now, all that said, I believe there is a place for djembes in the drumming world. One djembe in an ensemble can add nice patterns in its own special niche, somewhere between the medium-toned congas and the high metallic percussion. One drummer who listens well and has an open mind can find a wonderful, complimentary pattern that fills that niche perfectly. Occasionally, you get lucky enough to hear a djembe drummer do this.

Alternatives
The main problem with djembes is the overwhelming prevalence of the instrument. It's like people coming together to play rock music and there are only guitarists, or they come together to play a string quartet with only violas. There is a wide, wonderful world of percussion out there; there are Polynesian bamboo xylophones, Korean gongs, East African court drums, Turkish davuls, Indian tablas, Brazilian atabaques, Egyptian tars, Cuban bata, Japanese shime-daiko, and Peruvian bombos. The list goes on. Most of these instruments cost equal to or less than a decent djembe. Imagine the beautiful symphony of sounds possible with a tasteful rhythmic blend of these and other instruments. Here is a sampling of some fine general purpose drums.

• Congas have a beautiful sound and are easy to play. With their hard, thick heads, making distinct sounds such as slaps is much easier than with djembes. They go well with many styles of music, including rock, jazz, Afropop, and of course many Latin forms. Tuning is easy and precise. On the downside, they don't produce a very low bass and they are very heavy. To me, djembes are toy pianos; congas are concert pianos.
• Bougarabous/bugarabus are almost completely overlooked. They have almost all the advantages of djembes, but their cowskin heads produce a much warmer, fuller, and more powerful sound. Their bass is at least equal to the djembe, but even punchier. I can't understand why these drums are not more popular.
• Dununs/dun-duns/djun-djuns are bass drums often played with djembes. While their pitch is not as big and low as, say a surdo, they have a clean, throaty, punchy sound. They are tunable and easy to mount for play. They can really add a lot to a drum jam or many other situations. Many drummers avoid bass drums because they seem "boring" to play. There is a lot of creativity that can be incorporated into playing them. Indeed, they can be extremely expressive.
• Timbals are Brazilian hand drums supposedly invented to create a lightweight djembe. They were developed from tam-tams, rebolos, and timbas, and legend says put into its final form by Carlinhos Brown of Timbalada. While these drums have a strident, plasticky sound, they make up for it by being exceptionally light and quite inexpensive. Their heads are made of nylon, which means they won't react to moisture and only slightly to temperature.
• Tumbalas are new, a design from the Brazilian manufacturer Bauer, one of the finest makers of timbals. These are timbal shells with conga heads. The sound is quite nice, with the sharp attack of a conga, but with a broadness or openness. Like congas, tumbalas have that hard head, which means it's relatively easy to get crisp slaps. They produce a better bass than congas. These drums should be very popular.
• Kpanlogos are also West African drums with a conga-like shape and peg tuning. These are for drummers who like a classical style (the "Mali weave" of the djembes, ashikos, and bugarabus is a recent development). While the pegs require a little more care and can even be a pain in the butt sometimes, they make the drums very quick and easy to tune. The sound is thick and warm, and the medium cow or antelope heads are easy on the hands. Very strong slaps are possible; however, the bass is not particularly powerful. One of the best advantages of these drums is their portability. They are relatively light for a solid wood shell, and fairly compact.

Exploring Outside the Djembe Box
The playing styles of this broader world vary from fast and frantic to slow and mellow, from busy and massive to simple and sparse. The music can provoke excitement, melancholy, introspection, or sexual desire. But this wide span of enlightened experience is not possible by imitating one musical style on one type of drum. There is a great deal of growth potential and maybe even cultural knowledge to be gained by exploring the rhythm world.

So, where does that lead us? The modern Western world has its own musical child, rock music. Its ancestry was the blues, jazz, country, gospel, and Afro-Latin rhythms and was developed by young musicians willing to be open-minded and explore. They rarely copied anyone, but created music from their society, their culture, their interests, their experiences, and their hearts. Although most wanted to be guitarists, a significant number of them picked up bass guitar, drumkit, keyboards, Latin percussion, horns, and even orchestral instruments to add variety and color to their performances. Generally, they didn't take lessons, but cultivated their own styles. Would we be listening to Jimi Hendrix today if he had tried to adhere to the "correct" way to play guitar? They got the music in their blood first, and worked out their own ways to express it. Why can't Westerners take the same approach to drumming?

Forget buying that djembe. Pick up a drum you've never seen before, and play it from the heart. Add it to an international stew of percussion instruments and create your own voice. There are already far too many djembes in the world, and some beautiful, rare, hardwood tree in Africa will thank you for sparing its life.