A Self-Taught "Big Moussa?"

Take a look at this clip, and especially, at the information that the poster (xylophonist, Mamadou Diabate) has prepared.

Diabate describes that for the Sambla, practicing means “playing, making music and having fun together.” He explains that: “a goal of this exercise is that Small Moussa Diabate (here 5 years old) learns different ostinati so firmly that he, in spite of the rhythmically free-flying solo and the capricious beat-changes of Big Moussa Diabate [...], can't be thrown out of the beat any more.”

Well, a fundamental component to a more traditional apprenticeship is the presence of someone who would play the role of a “Big Moussa”—i.e. someone who already knows the accompaniment patterns quite well and who has a ready stock of embellishment possibilities in the hands, mind, and body. Without a Big Moussa accentuating and highlighting the various feels of given ostinati, and especially without the social interaction that makes the exercises “fun,” (see all the other children just hanging out, dancing, and clowning around?), practising becomes much more like work, and much less like play—or at the very least, like communication. Now granted, Little Moussa does have his fair share of work to do. He does have the accompaniment patterns to learn before he can even play the game with Big Moussa. And whenever one is learning new “vocabulary,” there’s a certain amount of struggle to undergo before appropriate application of that vocabulary becomes second nature.* But even still, when there is a Big Moussa involved, the rewards of the struggle are immediate. Patterns learned are applied directly to musical, communicative situations and learning becomes much more intrinsically rewarding. (My guess is that, unless the game were fun for both of the Moussas, they just wouldn't bother doing it. Does anyone you know play video games because they've been told that "practice makes perfect?")

Unfortunately, apart from my month in New York, I’ve never really had a “Big Moussa” to accompany, with whom to simply “play music,” nor from whom to learn about how to generate variation in the patterns acquired. The fact is, save for my month with Famoro, I’ve simply never been in the same city as a teacher for more than a few days at a time, and so, have had to video-mediate nearly all of my bala lessons. Even in New York (much to my dismay), I rarely played together with Famoro. (I alluded to this in an earlier post.) Instead of playing with me (letting me accompany him), Famoro would spend most of our lesson time just showing me some new accompaniment pattern or variation. Then he would leave me alone to figure out (usually via transcription of the video I had taken) the patterns shown and to practice them by myself.

Well . . . a new semester has begun at school and I find myself taking on the role of bala teacher. (Several people have expressed interest and I’ve finally decided to accept, and indeed, am excited to have a few students.) Naturally, I want the students to enjoy their studies. I’d rather that they had the opportunity to learn like Little Moussa, which is to say, communicatively, and high surrender. But I’ve had very little opportunity to learn with a Big Moussa myself, and so, it is difficult for me to “draw different feels out of the time” in just that way that would expand the students’ understanding of how they can learn the instrument without having to simply memorize a lot of lengthy phrases and then cut and paste them together—which, again unfortunately is how I’ve had to learn to play.

Now the purpose of this post is not to complain, but rather to try to articulate the dilemma (and perhaps even consider a solution.) I feel that if I had gone through (or could go through at some point during the course of my PhD program) a traditional-type apprenticeship, learning with a Big Moussa, then assuming the role of Big Moussa myself when I have students of my own would not only be easier for me, but would, I bet, also make learning more enjoyable for them.

*One hallmark of a good teacher is, of course, the ability to make the acquisition of new material as quick and as painless as possible, given the particular characteristics of the individual learner. With a good teacher, and perhaps a certain amount of focus, Little Moussa could no doubt learn the parts very quickly, but would still need at least some amount of time to memorize and allow patterns to sink in.

A Solid Week

I've been back in Toronto for exactly one week now and I've hit the “4-hours daily” goal easily. A big part of what makes it easier to practice for 4 hours a day is waking up at 6:00 every morning and, after about twenty minutes of morning activities, holing myself up in one of the undergrad practice rooms for two hours straight. (Actually, though, I don't practice for two hours straight. I break the time up into twenty minute chunks. Every twenty minutes, my alarm goes off, I get up, stretch, have a drink of water, and then settle back down into practicing for another twenty minutes. It sure feels more effective that way.)

My New York experience has recharged my batteries and I've got a much clearer understanding now of the relationship between my long term goals and the day to day grind. After my two hours in the morning, I spend most of the rest of the day reviewing and transcribing videos. I do continue to practice the material that Famoro showed me—and I’m advancing daily on that material—but because Naby Camara is coming to Toronto this weekend, I’ve had to recalibrate the trajectory a little.

Last year Naby played at Toronto’s Afro-Fest and in addition to taking a 1 ½-hour lesson with him, I made a one-hour video document of future lessons which I would subsequently transcribe and teach to myself. He and I have kept in pretty close contact since then. (He’s shipped a few balaw to me here and also sent me a copy of his instructional DVD. He’ll be coming to Toronto to do some performing with Alpha Yaya Diallo on Thurday and Friday and he’s asked me to help him organize some workshops for the extra days he’ll be in town.)

So, despite still having quite a lot of Famoro’s material to work through, I’m currently focusing on Naby’s DVD and the one-hour video that we made. There’s enough material there to keep me busy for several months, but I’m trying to learn just enough of it before his arrival to be able to ask him some specific questions and, I hope, receive some of the kind of guidance that will make the acquisition of the rest of the material (both his and Famoro's) higher surrender. Luckily, two of the pieces that Naby and I have already worked on together are the same pieces on which I spent most of my time in New York: Soli and Fasson. It will be great to take another lesson with Naby and get a different perspective on those two pieces. I still have so many questions!

Some Miscellaneous Thoughts

1.
Re: Friday, February 26, 2010's Surrender Value post, I said: There's more to language learning than memorizing vocabulary. A communicative approach is higher-surrender.

I wonder if this is true...

One way to test would be the scrolling piano-roll sight-readers thing (which I'll describe in a future post).

2.
I wonder if practice without performance imperatives, where social (and economic) feedback (and incentives) affect the role of "creativity," execution, speed, reactivity, etc. is doomed to never be as effective as practice where you aren't "struggling"...

3.
I think communicative playing involves (or is related to) listening, grooving, relaxing.

4.
To vary a riff and groove on a tune, try: listening for melodies within melodies, playing subtly with dynamics, taking certain notes out, and/or shifting your multimeter perspective.

Surrender Value

There's more to language-learning than memorizing vocabulary. A communicative approach is "higher-surrender."

This, from the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics:

> Surrender Value
>
> This concept is taken from the world of insurance. A policy with
> high surrender value yields a quick return on investment.
> Wilkins (1974) observes that in some situations (e.g. on pre-
> sessional courses) the learner requires a swift ‘return’ on
> ‘investment’ made, in terms of ability to communicate. Wilkins
> argues that the notional/functional syllabus provides this since
> the learner is soon able to use language to communicative ends.
> The structural syllabus, in contrast, has low surrender value
> because it may take a considerable time before the learner has
> enough grammar to attempt communication. (1974).

Tonight, I'm finding myself just memorizing parts. I'm pretty sure that memorization is a big part of learning to play. But tonight, I'm letting myself get hung up at every "mistake" and not playing communicatively at all. Being limited to just memorizing "vocabulary," it feels like I'm compromising the development of the skill of recovering from a missed note--the very skill that would supersede the need to have parts memorized (or at least that would allow for the creative improvisatory recovery from something I "went for," but missed.) The question comes up: "OK, so why not just stop memorizing vocabulary tonight and work on the development of that skill?" And the answer is: "Fine . . . and how do I do that?"

Hmm . . . I'm going to have to define "communicative playing" at some point. . . . And "improvisation."