Myth & Processing When Teaching the Djembe
“We try to reach the deep well of knowledge and energy behind the Djembe - what Amadou Kouyate refers to as the “traditional technology” - in many ways. It is ancient and it comes from a very different cosmology and worldview than ours. In the culture of West Africa it is extremely powerful and in that context it is known that the Djembe can heal not only individuals, but entire communities. Unfortunately, this is something that you cannot really write down or say in a way that actually conveys knowledge about these things. When teaching about this, or bringing this into your practice, the best you can do is hint at it, use metaphor, or get glimpses of it with your peripheral vision.
Before you can use any of this, you have to experience it. This comes from many hours of drumming both alone, and with others. It comes from working with teachers who know much more than you do. It comes from opening your heart and spirit to the power of the Djembe, and from putting so much of yourself into working with the Djembe (and on yourself) that you surpass the limits of what you thought you could do. At the beginning of your journey into this world, you don’t have experience of this deep knowledge. All you can do is to be open to what your teachers bring to you, work hard, and pay attention.
In this training we begin to enter this deeper part of the experience in a few different ways. The most obvious is the kind of community that we form in our training cohort. If we commit, we find out quickly that we are bringing more of our personal selves, our inner selves, into the endeavor than we expected to. We find that the level of trust and sharing that inevitably develops when we do this kind of work together becomes something we look forward to. The relationships that we form with our fellow trainees and the teachers stand out as being authentic and of substance, so we increasingly bring our most evolved and vulnerable self into the room. We collaboratively open ourselves up to learning at a deep level.
Poetry and myth are another way to hint at this knowledge and experience. Each day of training begins with a poem. The poem is not always directly related to the content of the Day’s training, but beginning with the use of poetic language and imagery sets the stage for touching upon deeper truths. There is something about bringing poetry into the room that emphasizes the importance and sacredness of this work.”
Excerpt from Day 3, Page 64: “Therapeutic Drumming Interventions: A strength based approach.”
