About

March 22, 2009

profile-picture-jeff9 Hi, my name is Jeff Duyndam and I’m the founder of The Christchurch Djembe Centre. So happy you stopped by  :-)

The beginning of my love of drumming started in 1989 when my good friend Basha invited me to an African Dance class in Encinitas, California. What happened that night dramatically changed my life. Before hearing these drums and seeing this dance, I was wandering through life, bebopping along in my own private Idaho. And then, oh my God! BAM, my bones were vibrating, shaking and I was awakened from the inside.

So amazing what a piece of wood and a skin can do  :-)

This was a week or so before my wife and I moved to the Kona side of the Big Island in Hawaii. I had to learn how to play these wild sounding drums. Right away I tracked down the main drummer from the dance class and called him up. Yes, he had one djembe for sale. I was there, quick as you can say “slap, tone, bass”!

This djembe ended up being one of the few djembes on the Big Island at the time. And the only dance and drum classes were on the other side of the Big Island. Hawaii is huge. No wonder they call it the Big Island. To drive across the island to the other side is 2 hours minimum one way, but I was hooked on drumming and so I went twice a week. I was following a calling and a passion and the drum was leading.

During the drum classes, one thing that happened besides learning African drum rhythms was finding new family members. Many new friendships were formed and we bonded as we worked our way through the learning stages.

My first drum teacher Reggae became my best friend and we played and made drums together consistently for the five years I lived on the Big Island. We spent many long days scraping fresh goat skins and rubbing ashes from a fire into the skins to preserve and dry them, getting them ready to use on our drums.

Reggae had incredible patience, especially to put up with my long drumming learning curve.  I was listening to an old cassette tape today of a private lesson and I was struggling with one part to Kpanlogo. He was so patient and slowed the hand pattern down to a speed that a beginning drummer like me could play it. Patience and respect must be similar attributes to have as a teacher and friend.

As I look back on those first five years of drumming, so many roots images come to mind. One memory was of the end of a long day of using two chain saws for several hours to free two perfect 30 inch long and 18 inch wide sections of a tree. The Kamani tree was on its side, having fallen in the past year and the cutting was challenging and I was down at the edge of the ocean, stumbling around on large lava rocks, rolling the rough logs end over end towards my car. This was what I came here for, this is why I was born; to experience the raw power of nature, massive trees, a new island constantly being formed (lava was pouring into the ocean five kilometers from where I was cutting the logs), pounding surf, fresh warm wind blowing spray from the surf, my skin tingling.

This was a time in my life when I was possessed by visions of djembes emerging out of soon to be carved logs. I was constantly on the lookout for fallen trees as I drove to and from work or classes. During the day I  daydreamed of drums and while falling to sleep I fantasized various shapes of drums, seeing pictures of djembes and djunjuns in my minds eye. The African rhythms became objects of meditation and they would stick in my mind, playing over and over; sweetness of the hand patterns and layers of melody. It’s so nice to have the drums calling me and giving me plenty of opportunities to play them.

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