Brazilian Samba Drumming
3rd February 2021
In Music, the Year 7 students are learning about the Brazilian Samba Drumming with a particular focus on the Rio Samba style. They learned the main instruments in a Samba band together with their basic rhythms. There are lots of instruments in a samba band and they have looked at the following;
The Surdo is the biggest drum. In order to get its rhythm right, you say the words ‘Sur - do’ as you play it. This is the heartbeat of the band as it maintains the pulse of the music. They improvised the surdo drum with the Tom Tom drum.
The tamborim plays some complicated rhythms in the band. To get the rhythm, say ‘ This is ea-sy let’s play the sa-mba’ as you play it. You can use a plastic plate or lid with a stick if you don’t have one.
The Ganza is the super silver samba shaker. They sound amazing. You shake it to the rhythm of words ‘ga-nza’ holding it flat at both ends with the seeds evenly spread out. If you don’t have the ganza, you can use an egg shaker or fill up a quarter of an empty squash bottle with some dried couscous or beans or rice.
The Agogo is one of the oldest, high pitched and loudest in the band. To play it, say ‘It is fun to play a-go-go’. You can improvise this instrument using a saucepan and wooden spoon. Experiment with the pot to get two different pitches (high and low).
Caixa is the mid-ranged drum also known as the Brazilian snare drum. It makes a lovely buzzing sound played with one stick. You can use a snare drum or metal tin that can buzz when you play it. The caixa rhythm that they learned goes like this ‘ play caixa like this’.
Having learned all these rhythmic parts, we put them together and performed using the copy back technique and polyrhythm to hear what it sounds like, just like at the carnival in Rio. Watch the video below.
In the next lesson, they will compose a Brazilian tune and accompany it with these rhythms as they develop the structure of their performance.
