In the beginning...

"In the beginning was the drum. The woman went into the forest and heard the drum. It entered her heart and was beating there. She went into the forest again. The drum entered her womb and was beating there. And so human beings were born into the world." Thus spoke a storyteller at Explosion Africaine, held in UBC's elegant yellow cedar sound box, the Chan Centre, celebrating traditional music and dance of Guinea, West Africa. Fourteen drummers, singers, athletic acrobat-dancers and mimes (the gifts overlap) sent me into that hypnotic sensory-saturated social trance provided by indigenous music everywhere. For teaching me how to hear the hallucinatory patterns that rise above polyrhythms, thank you, Clare. Explosion Africaine's core ensemble consists of djembe drums and a group of bass drums called doundoun, sangban, and kenkeni, plus marimbas and hand-held percussion instruments. This music was born before colonization in an area of West Africa called Wassalon, now parts of Guinea, Mali, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal. Here's a review from the Georgia Straight. The event was part of Festival Vancouver (their photo).