Teaching

Afro-Cuban percussion course

congas, bongò, timbales, batà, clave, cowbell, guiro, maracas, shekeré

- history of Afro-Cuban culture
- concept of clave
- basic technique: hand setting, sounds and rudiments on the conga drum
- Tumbao rhythm on one and more congas
- congas rhythms: Sòn, Danzòn, Cha Cha, Charanga, Guaracha, Bolero, Sòn-Montuno, Guaracha, Dengue, Pilòn, Piccadillo, various ----- types of Songò, Jazz conga patterns, Reggae conga patterns, Descarga, Afro-Cuban rhythm, Bomba-portoricana, Cuban Bomba.
- percussions in the Cuban rhythmic orchestra: bongò and cowbell, timbales, clave, guiro, maracas
- rumba from Havana, Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba
- variations of salidor and segundo drums in the rumba
- solo patterns of the quinto drum in the rumba
- yoruba, bantù, abakuà and ararà ritual traditions
- Cuban Carnival rhythms: Conga from Havana and Santiago

"Afro-American Percussions" weekly workshop

Afro-American Percussions is a workshop of ethnic percussions addressed to people aged 16 years and over, interested in experiment a collective and practical experience with rhythm.
The main goal is to develop a music ensemble, achievable through communication and listening to the other through the rhythm.
The workshop is structured through group meetings where participants play different kinds of percussion instruments, belonging to the Cuban, Brazilian, West African and Arabic rhythmic culture, learning to get closer to the musical traditions of these populations.
Instruments are played by hands, to experience the direct contact with the drum skin and vibrations, or by wooden and metal sticks.
The role of the conductor is that of guide, which serves as a point of reference for the group, in order to understand and make realizable the execution of rhythms, bring out and enhance the innate musical-rhythmic ability.
Listening to others, collaboration and communication are the foundation of the workshop, where the sharing and exchange of emotions reinforce the relationship between the participants.
Everyone contributes to the group with his own rhythmic experience that is able to offer, feeling the pleasure of sharing it with others and making it available to achieve a common goal: to play rhythms of Afro-Latin American traditions.
During the course of the workshop, participants are also invited to experience moments of collective improvisation, or creative space within which can play instinctively, drifting totally emotions.
The workshop aims to provide progressively to the group the ability to perform a polyrhythm, with which eventually becomes possible to realize a performance at the end of the activity.

main targets:
- learning to listen and communicate with others
- stimulate creativity
- develop the sense of community and cooperation
- accustom to make its own contribution to a group
- knowing cultural traditions of other populations
- develop the sense of music and rhythm through the research of sounds and beats in harmony with their own personality.
- obtain benefits in health: reducing stress and emotional release
- carry out a performance at the end of the workshop

program:

- direct contact with percussion instruments
- playing simple rhythmic patterns
- creation of an ensemble
- improvisation

instruments:
- bass, medium and high pitched drums (congas, djembé, darbouka), floor toms, snare drum, cymbals, cowbells, woodblocks, - triangles, clave, shakers, bells, rattles, recovered items, wooden and metal sticks.

Drum Circle

The facilitated Drum Circle is an unique event, to which all those who want to experience a state of wellbeing can participate, having fun with music and rhythm. It can take place everywhere, both outdoors and indoors.
It is not necessary to be percussionists or musicians, but to want to play percussion freely and spontaneously in a circle, invited and supported by the facilitator, who helps the group to discover the pleasure of being an integral part of a pulsating organism, in which everyone communicates with the others and creates musical harmony.
To a Drum Circle can participate people of all ages, children, adolescents, adults, seniors, musicians, percussionists, singers and beginners.
In this lies the great communicative and unifying force of experience, during which everyone contributes his own rhythmic sense, expressing and discovering his own innate musicality.
It is not a percussion workshop in which you learn to play, but an intense experience of sharing that takes place in a single time, with a duration varying from about 1h10' to 1h30', possibly repeatable with regular or occasional frequency, forming every time groups with the same participants or with new people.
Learning occurs in an indirect and natural way, through techniques that the facilitator puts in place and that fall within the method of "teaching without teaching" devised by Arthur Hull, founder of the Village Music Circles that has spread the practice of the Drum Circle throughout the world. This method gradually makes the group aware of the different sounds and types of instruments, the expressive dynamics of music and the spontaneous melodies that can be created in the collective rhythm.
The Village Music Circles method is accredited by the MIUR - Ministry of Education, University and Research for its contents of education in listening, dialogue, collaboration and harmony.
Who has his own drum can take it with him, whoever does not have one, finds it on the place along with many other small percussions made available by the facilitator.
Just choose an instrument and relax, letting yourself be guided by the collective rhythm and the enveloping energy of the drum circle.