September 24, 2014

Patty Tang & Lamine Touré Present, When Drums Speak: The Sounds of Senegalese Sabar, Friday October 3 from 12:00-1pm in Oechsle 224, Dance Workshop from 3:00-5pm North 3rd Street Building Room 248

There will be 2 events this day.

Lecture will be held in Oechsle 224 from 12:00-1:00 pm

Food & Drinks will be provided

Dance Workshop will be held at The New Arts Building-North 3rd Street Building Room 248

Sabar is a vibrant drum and dance tradition of the Wolof people of Senegal, West Africa. In Senegal, sabars are played exclusively by griots, a caste of hereditary musicians. Sabar drum troupes perform at a variety of events, from neighborhood dance parties to baptisms, weddings, wrestling matches, and political meetings. The sabar ensemble consists of numerous parts that come together to create complex polyrhythms. Accompaniment parts create the fabric upon which the lead drummer solos and the rest of the ensemble plays rhythms and bàkks (musical phrases composed by griot drummers or passed down from older generations in their families). Some bàkks are derived from a tradition of rhythmically declaimed spoken word, called taasu.

Patricia Tang is Associate Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her A.B. in Music from Brown University in 1993 and her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at Harvard University in 2001. Patty is an ethnomusicologist specializing in West Africa; her research interests span from Senegalese drumming to the globalization of Afropop music. She is the author of Masters of the Sabar: Wolof Griot Percussionists of Senegal (Temple University Press, 2007), and the faculty advisor for Rambax, MIT’s Senegalese drum ensemble. She received an AAUW American Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2006-2007 for her second book project, Africa Fête and the Globalization of Afropop, and is currently conducting research on the music of diasporic African immigrant communities. As a violinist and keyboardist, she has performed and recorded with African artists Nder et le Setsima Group, Positive Black Soul, Balla Tounkara, Balla Kouyate and Lamine Touré & Group Saloum.

Lamine Touré is widely recognized as one of Senegal’s leading percussionists. Born into a griot family of sabar drummers, Lamine Touré has been drumming since the age of four, performing with his family troupe at weddings, baptisms, and dance events. Former percussionist for Nder et le Setsima Group, Touré now leads the Afro-mbalax band, Group Saloum, and directs Rambax, MIT’s Senegalese Drumming Ensemble. He also teaches sabar drum and dance classes in the Boston area. For more information, visit www.laminetoure.com.