doni doni kononi b’a nyaga da

[little by little the bird makes its nest]

Since the craziness and awesomeness of the other toubabous is gone it was kind of weird walking around an emptpy house but Sophie and I knew today would be a day for adjusting and catching up on work we hadn't been doing all this time. Today's Djoun Djoun lesson was so amazing. For my first rhythms, I learned Didadi & Tonsole, two dances I've danced before with Michelle. Music in Mali is learned orally, meaning the most you'll ever get on paper is the words to a song (which I think is really just to make American students feel more comfortable) and also meaning that there is no Malian system for musical notation- a system I like and rely heavily on in my music studies back home. The "notation" barrier wasn't to extreme for me in my djoun djoun lesson today because I've been studying Malian music traditions for almost three years now and I think I was able to break most of that barrier last summer.

In terms of applying this concept of the oral tradition to learning an instrument, the djoun djoun is very new for me in practice and so it was initially a challenge for me to adapt to Madou's style of teaching within this tradition. After an hour of repeating patterns after him, getting the hang of the different timbre's assigned to different parts of the rhythm, and fine tuning the immensely particular rhythms of the cadences, I started to notice that after only an hour of guided practice, I was taking these rhythms to memory fairly well considering it takes me hours or days of practice to memorize music (or most things rather) from the form of notation I rely on back home. I'm not sure if it's the context of my experience in Mali, my connection to Malian music, the teaching practice of Madou, or the oral tradition, but today I feel really accomplished in managing to learn two rhythms on the djoun djoun. I think the lessons I learn from Madou's teaching practices will be especially useful in thinking about my own teaching practices here in Mali at the Chidlren's Center but also back home in thinking about multiple intelligences and differentiated instruction.

After getting a lot of progress today on my thesis (yes, I'm transcribing interviews while I'm in Mali), my work with Breakthrough, and really concrete planning for the activities and projects with the Children's Center I feel really great and adjusted to this summer in Mali! I know the potential and limitations for myself and those I'm working with and as a result, and its been really refreshing to not have any major of learning curve, I've been able to jump right in and hit the ground running (two idioms in a row!) which is something I was really nervous about all summer.