Adama Drame

A long-term champion of West Africa’s loudest hand drum, the djembé master Adama Dramé here gets his early 90s solo set reissued on the bargain bucket Airmail music series. The idea of djembé group recordings has now advanced far from the standard presentation of village dance accompaniment, in part due to the work of Dramé, who has documented solos and composed suites for audio release. This was pretty much his first available effort in this vein, heavy on the improvisation and with almost no composition or real arrangement. It’s very varied for a recording that seems very much off-the-cuff in comparison with his later work. Within the 11 tracks we have a balance of four stream-of-consciousness solos, four djembé ensemble tracks, one tasteful accompaniment to a women’s song, one (probably multi-tracked) self– conversation with bongos that’s slightly dubious and one jam with a drumset.

Dramé’s wide djembé sound is not to everyone’s taste but he does produce neat melodies from the harmonics of the skin, alongside all manner of rolls, and engages in some fine conversations with other musicians. He exhibits the widest array of djembé sounds you are likely to hear, his extended technique producing the maximum contrast attainable: often his solos contrast foreground and background playing so well, you are not sure if it is only one player. If you like this kind of thing, and many will, this is a bargain.