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WHAT IS DUNDUN DANCE ALL ABOUT ANYWAY?

Have you heard about the dance class with sticks and a drum? Here is a little snippet of our Thursday nights class.

Dundun dance was founded in West Africa and is a dance that combines stick drumming and dance. It is performed and played by men and women and incorporates lots of funky breaks to West African traditional rhythms. The dance moves are the same as you would find in an African dance class though slightly adjusted to allow for sticks being held at the same time. It is too much fun, great exercise and you can’t help to embrace the African spirit of a smile and rhythm when beating those big drums! Why not come and try it for yourself? A new course starts June 1st! 😉

WHAT ARE DUNDUNS?

These are the cylindrical stick drums that you see in class and that form the music along with the djembe rhythms we play. If you have taken a class with us before we would of introduced them to you. The middle sized drum is the Sangban and often it plays the signature rhythm to the music. The smallest drum is the Kenkenni and it is the time keeper. Last and largest is the Dundunba which is the power of the Dundun ensemble and also completes the melody. They each have two notes and are played with a metal bell which adds the light, interlocking patterns and another timbre to the ensemble. The rhythms played on the dundun’s drum head follow the rhythm played on the bell.

THE DUNDUN DANCE CLASS.

In dundun dance there are no bells used and the duns are played upright whilst sitting on the ground. They can also be laid on their side and played will standing over the dundun. The dundun dance also involves hitting the edge of the drum with the sticks and the sticks together aswell.

This class is an active dance class which involves drumming with sticks on dunduns whilst dancing around the drum. It is incredibly fun and you needn’t be a dancer or a drummer to do this class. It is a fantastic class for stress relief, fitness and coordination. For those of you that have found the African dance class a little to physically challenging, this is the perfect way to indulge your love of African drumming with dance. We recommend this class to all of our drumming students. Developing an understanding of the dance to a rhythm is essential to African culture and music.

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