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In this chapter I
would like to elaborate a little on a
special rhythm, much used in reggae,
especially Rastafarian Reggae: The
Nyabingi Rhythm. The name for the
rhythm comes from African Congolese
language and in the Rastafarian
tradition it means: "Death to
Black and White Downpressors".
The rhythm serves as music for many
Rastafarian chants. Although the
rhythm is used in reggae, it is not a
reggae rhythm in the strict sense of
the word: there are even some
Rastafarians, shunning almost every
technology and so on, who claim that
Rasta's can't make reggae and should
stick to Nyabinghi.
There's a lot to say
about Nyabinghi, and on this page you
can find a link to a site that makes
special Nyabinghi drums and give some
back ground information about it. In
this section I will stick to the
musical aspect of it, and I would like
to explain some of the basic aspects
of it.
But First, I would
like to ask you to listen to the
following audioclip from an original
Nyabinghi session.
LISTEN: EXAMPLE0009.MP3
(336 Kb)
As you can hear, the
Nyabinghi rhythm is not a drum rhythm,
played by a drum-set. Although it is
used in Nyabinghi tracks, basically
it's a rhythm played by three
different drums, a Bass Drum, a
Repeater or Kete Drum, and the Funde
Drums. The foundation for the Nya
rhythm is the bass drum. It plays a
straight heart-beat rhythm, which,
when you would have to program it in a
sequencer, could look like this:
While this bass drum
plays the heart beat, the other drums
play over it. The accents of the
rhythm are on the 1st and 3rd count.
But it is also possible to
"halve" this, by putting the
accent on the first two counts of a
measure. So on the one and the two.
That will make the rhythm much slower
as you will see in the next chapter..
Below is an audioclip of a Nyabinghi
inspired rhythm I have played on a
handmade conga. It served as
introduction for a track called Jah
Glory (SPEED: 150.16 bpm).
LISTEN: EXAMPLE0010.MP3
(329 Kb)
It's very difficult,
IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE, to program the
Nyabinghy Rhythm. It is based on the
playing of the three drums. It's
better to record play with a conga
then to program it. But I will, in the
next chapter, show you an example of a
general midi programmed Nyabinghi
style rhythm |
