West African master drummer brings music, dance to Greenville

Children are encouraged to attend the performance and workshops

Ron Barnett
The Greenville News
West African master drummer Bolokada Conde

Is it possible that rhythms pounded out on African drums can have a healing effect on our troubled world?

After sitting in on a practice session of Ballet Manden, a West African drum, dance and acrobatic troupe performing in Greenville on Friday, I would say yeah, there’s a possibility.

There’s something special about the “clean energy” a wooden goblet-shaped drum called a djembe can produce when the sheepskin stretched across its rim is set in vibration by a master drummer, like Bolokada Conde.

He’s a native of Guinea who calls Greenville his second home and leader of this 15-member group of West African musicians, dancers and acrobats who are in town for a performance Friday night and workshops on Saturday and Sunday at the Greenville Shrine Club.

If you go, I promise you will leave with a smile.

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Here’s how Bolokada describes the effect drumming has on him.

“This make me happy when I play djembe,” he told me during a break from rehearsals at Christ Church Episcopal School. “If I’m a little bit hungry, I forget it. I play drum. If somebody do something frustrating, why not play djembe? That’s gone. When I play this I’m tired, overworked, I play drum, tired gone, overwork clear.”

The djembe has taken Bolokada around the world, spreading joy through rhythm.

“It has given me a lot of wonderful friends everywhere in the United States,” he said. “And the djembe have clean energy and make people be together, love together. That’s why it’s important.”

You may have to hear it in person to believe it.

Members of Ballet Manden in performance.

Susan Natale is a believer. She’s a music teacher at the Clemson Montessori School who met Bolokada soon after he made Greenville his home in America to escape the cold winters of Illinois, where he had been based.

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“We started taking classes with him and we just fell in love with him,” she said. “He has just the most beautiful smile and the most beautiful energy and brings joy to any class he does.”

It's very important to Bolokada to have children come to the performance and workshops, she said.

Sarah Lee Parker Mansare is another believer, and she has made it her life’s work. A native of Seattle, she said his drumming “touched my soul deeply” when she took a dance class with him in 1996. Now, she’s the manager of his group.

“This music and this dance is way more than it first appears,” she said. “People say this drum and dance actually connects people and brings people together in a way that is a little unbelievable.”

You need to watch the video that goes with this column to get some sense of what it’s like. The dancing and acrobatics are so totally uninhibited, it will free your mind.

Natural born drummer

Bolokada comes from a village in Guinea called Kissidougou, where his mother was a “big, famous” dancer. She was his first drum, as a toddler.

“I played my mama’s body, I played my body, I played the floor,” he recalled, grinning. “And my mama said, he’s going to be Djembefolas.” That’s what they call a master drummer.

Before long he had his own drums, and he started traveling from one village to another, meeting different teachers and learning the many different West African Malinke rhythms. He soon became known as the premier djembe player in the region.

There are some 600 different rhythms in West African music, each with 10 different percussive parts. Bolokada knows them all.

The rhythms make you want to get up and move, but they have deeper meanings beyond dance. Each has a special purpose, such as the naming of babies, cultivation, rites of passage.

In Guinea, 35 different languages are spoken, and the rhythms are a sort of language that all people can understand.

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Being a master drummer means more than being a great instrumentalist. It has to do with "a way of walking in the world that carries with it respect and dignity and a knowledge of self and God,” Mansare said.

Bolokada has that sense of openness and joy that you’d expect from a spiritual master.

“He’s sort of humble but he is one of the greatest masters on the planet,” Mansare said. “And he’s assembled pretty much some of the best of the best from Guinea, West Africa, to be a part of this company, and he has invested his heart and soul in the whole thing.”

I was amazed at the acrobatics that two or three of the male members of the group were performing, flipping each other into the air and balancing while the drums thumped along at break-neck speed.

The women, dressed in brightly colored traditional garb, danced with wild, energetic abandon, while Bolokada stood back, directing the show.

Members of Ballet Manden perform.

Guinea is one of the poorest nations in the world, but it’s very rich in spirit, Mansare said, contrasting it with America, which is the opposite in many ways.

Maybe a good dose of West African rhythm is just what we need. And I know where you can get it: at the Shrine Club, 119 Beverly Road, Greenville, at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The show is called "Sewaba." Go to sewaba.ticketleap.com for ticket prices and information on workshops.

“It’s gonna be big fun, toe-tapping, energy raising, community creating,” Mansare said.

It won't be a passive experience, like watching a movie or TV, she said.

"This will be something the audience will feel for days after the experience. There’s a community feeling and a connection to humanity that happens when people hear this music and see.”

Some of the songs are 800 to 1,000 years old. If you’re lucky, they may just make you feel brand new.

Ron Barnett