Percussion

Musical instruments in the percussion family are played by striking with the hand or with a stick or beater, or by shaking, including drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, bells, and rattles. On this page you can find out more about the percussion instruments we are learning in school, and you can listen to some amazing percussionists from different genres and cultures. Percussion playing is so much fun! 

Samba Drumming 

The instruments that make up the Samba drumming group are all examples of percussion instruments. They are perfect for marching and making a BIG noise! 

Five facts about Samba:

• 
  It's a Brazilian music genre with roots in West African music
• The word was originally used for a type of popular dance
• The music originated in afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th Century
• A traditional Samba drumming group is called a Bateria
• Samba is usually performed at carnival time! You can catch Samba groups at the Hackney One carnival, or in Notting Hill, as well as at carnivals all over the world.

Here are some of the instruments that we are using in school (and some alternatives!)

Can you practise saying the Portuguese names? 

Samba Reggae

We are learning to play Samba Reggae like in this performance. The tempo is a little slower than in other types of Samba. Do you like it? How does it make you feel? 

February 2022: Here's a rehearsal with Y6 Sapphire after just 5 Samba lessons. We have managed to learn the polyrhythms for the main groove and need a bit more practice with the introduction, breaks and endings! Which instruments are keeping the pulse? Which patterns can you hear? Which instrument would you like to try?

Olodum

Olodum is widely credited with developing the music style known as samba reggae and for its active participation in carnaval each year. Neguinho do Samba, the lead percussionist, created a mix of the traditional Brazilian samba beat with merengue, salsa, and reggae rhythms for the Bahian Carnival of 1986; this became known as samba reggae. This "bloco afro" music is closely tied to its African roots, as seen through its percussion instruments, participatory dancing and unique rhythm. It also directly draws from many Caribbean cultures, like Cuba and Puerto Rico. Olodum gained worldwide notoriety as an African-Brazilian percussive group and performed in Europe, Japan, and almost all of South America. Here is a live performance from the group, and their version of Samba Reggae. 

Olodum appeared in Michael Jackson's video of his song They Don't Care About Us in 1996.

Tuned Percussion

Some percussion instruments are 'tuned' with different pitches. This means they can play tunes or melodies, using lots of different notes. In class, we sorted percussion instruments into 'tuned' and 'untuned' categories. The drum kit and triangle ended up in the middle as different sized drums and triangles have different pitches. They would probably be considered 'untuned' percussion, however. 

Here's a guide to the tuned percussion instruments found in the orchestra. Check out the different sound of each instrument. An instrument's sound or character is called timbre. 

Here are some great tuned percussion performances from around the world!

Ranad Ek from Thailand. The Ranad Ek is like a xylophone, with 21 wooden bars suspended over a boat-shaped resonator that are played with two mallets. In the video you can see how the players play lots of octave notes - like a higher and lower version of the same pitch. You can also hear lots of fast runs of next-door notes. The Ranad is part of a Piphat ensemble - classical music considered to be of high importance in Thailand. This clip is from a fictional film about two players competing to be the best. That's why they look so serious! The second clip of the Ranad Kaeo. The bars on this instrument are made of glass! They are played with soft mallets... 

Balafon from regions of West Africa. In the first video, you can hear Bassidi and Khalifa play large Bobo balafons, played widely throughout Mali and the western regions of Burkina Faso. They both play with the Bwazan, one of Mali's longstanding percussion ensembles based in Bamako, Mali. The wooden bars are played with mallets, and amplified by large gourds hanging underneath. The second video features Afrojazz group Djarabikan Balafon, from Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). This is a great track to dance to!

Lithophones are played in different forms in many places in the world. The bars ar made with stones carved to produce different pitches. The first clip shows a lithophone in Tay Nguyen, Vietnam - A traditional instrument of the Raglai people. 

Marimba

Here's some old footage of Queensbridge children playing tuned percussion when they were in Year 3. This is a piece of music called The Sea. We were practising playing long and short notes. Can you hear how we let the sound ring out on semibreve (4 beat) notes? We also play lots of short crotchet (1 beat) notes.