The cultural holiday was created in 1966 by the West Coast scholar and activist, Maulana Ron Karenga, as a Black American and Pan-African holiday to honor the ancestors, along with celebrating history, family, community and culture.

A powerful musical voice

The djembe, also known as “jembe,” is a powerful musical voice that, when played skillfully, can be clearly heard in musical orchestras. 

The drum’s likely origins date back to the 12th century in Mali, West Africa, Kojo Bey, wrote in “Jembe Revolution: The Birth of the Jembe in America.”

“To African Americans in particular who seek to reclaim cultural elements loss during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the djembe has long been a tool of reclamation, communication, reconnection, and healing despite centuries long practices  to forcibly remove the drum from Black identities,” said Aya Shabu, an educator, writer, performing artist and member of The Magic of African Rhythm, who helps to coordinate the Umoja Kwanzaa celebration at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham.

A goal of unity

More pointedly, Shabu added, “the djembe [can] unify the global African village – a primary goal of Kwanzaa. Unity is the first and most central principle to Kwanzaa celebrations everywhere.”

“(T)he djembe has long been a tool of reclamation, communication, reconnection, and healing despite centuries long practices  to forcibly remove the drum from Black identities ... ”

Aya Shabu, an educator, writer and performing artist

Simmons, in addition to being one of the world’s leading scholars of traditional West African music, has performed on Broadway, including the musical “Timbuktu!” that was directed by Geoffrey Holder and starred Eartha Kitt, Melba Moore, James Hawthorne “Chief” Bey and Obba Babatunde.

He is one of the early African American djembe practitioners who studied with Ladji Camara, the legendary lead djembe drummer with Les Ballet Africains, of Guinea, West Africa. Camara is universally credited as the musician responsible for popularizing the instrument in America and across the globe.

“I studied with Ladji,” Simmons said in Bey’s oral history. “Right in his house … So I learned how to get the correct sounds out of that drum.”

A native of Queens, New York, Simmons didn’t start out as a drummer. “I started out as a tap dancer,” taking lessons at the Gloria Jackson School of Dance at age nine, he explained.

Simmons said he and his best friend, Melvin Jefferson who was also studying tap, danced at a concert, and after they finished their number, they stood in the wings and watched the next act – a group of drummers. “That night, we both went home and told our parents we want to take drum lessons and that’s how I got started playing drums,” he said.

Following Les Ballets Africains’ 1959 performance in the United States, Simmons said the djembe sparked widespread interest during the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York.

“Les Ballet Africains came to the World’s Fair, and they had unopened crates of djembes,” said Simmons, who added World Fair officials had no intention of displaying the instruments until a worker convinced them to open the crates. 

Simmons said African American drummers started buying them because Les Ballets Africains’ drummers did not want to take the instruments back to their homeland.

“They wanted to get rid of them,” he said. “They were selling those drums for like 20 and 40 dollars. Now you’d be lucky to find one for under $500. If it’s less than that, you might not even want it.”

Over the ensuing decades, Simmons said people started “capitalizing” on the djembe and now “it’s got to be at least a million-dollar industry.”

Lessons to pass on

Because of commercialization, what has been lost is the “bush style” tradition and articulation of the instrument.

“The djembe is in rock bands, in jazz bands, in rhythm and blues bands, you can find the djembe anywhere now onstage, doing something, “he said. “And that’s why, in a lot of cases, the drum is lost because it’s not being played the way it’s supposed to be played.”

Simmons said the language of the [djembe] comes from how the drum is tuned, and your hand technique, and that today’s djembes are tuned too high.

Those were the lessons he was passing on to Henderson and O’Meara, the two students who showed up for the last day of his djembe class at the Biddle Music Building.

“That’s your slap. That’s your tone,” he demonstrates on his djembe for the students. “You gotta be able to separate the two.”

The students are playing a rhythm called “dunumba,” a popular dance rhythm also known as “the rhythm of the strong man.”

He stops them after a few minutes.

“You gotta follow him, number one,” he tells O’Meara, “and feel the rhythm.”

And finally:

“It’s not what you’re playing,” Simmons tells his students. “It’s how you play the rhythm in terms of sound and technique. The bass, tone and slap all have to be defined and clear. “That’s where the music is.”