Introduction
Where it all starts: how I’ve laid out the course, why strong foundations matter, and how much you should really be practising.
Like if I say, I want you to play a Doum and a Tek, I don’t want you to think, what’s a Doum? What’s a Tek? I want you to be capable and confident in those basics.
Hello, and welcome to darbuka.org! My name is Ibi Malik, and I’ll be your teacher. Everything here is based on the Darbuka Mastery Programme, the course I first created in 2020. This course takes you from never having played a darbuka to having strong, complete foundations: the strokes, how to hold the drum, how to read and practise rhythms, and one of the most popular rhythm families around. We’ll start with the bare bones of darbuka technique and work our way up from the ground. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to keep growing as a darbuka player on your own.
This foundation will be critical to your darbuka success.
The reason is simple; you absolutely cannot build on weak foundations, especially in music. These fundamental techniques should be second nature to you if you want to advance quickly and efficiently through your darbuka studies. Later in your studies, you don’t want to stop and think, “What’s a Doum again?”. You want to be confident that you have the tools you need to play any rhythm that’s thrown at you.
Think of it as a toolbox; if you’re missing the drill, all of the screws are useless.
To make it easier, I’ve split this course into 11 lessons. Many of these lessons cover elements of technique. However, I have included specific sections to help you get used to applying this technique to an actual rhythm. By the end of this course, you should not only know the basic techniques that you require to play the darbuka effectively, but you should also know the basic forms of one of the most popular darbuka rhythm families around! That’s no small achievement!
Don’t progress past any lesson until you’ve understood the topic entirely.
For example, Lesson 3 (The Doum) cannot be mastered until Lesson 2 (How to Hold the Darbuka) is mastered. The whole course works similarly, and it is critical at this stage not to miss anything. Without these fundamentals, you will struggle significantly later on in your journey. If you have issues with any topics at this stage, don’t worry – keep practising and it will come. If you’re really struggling, every lesson has a video of me teaching it, and every rhythm has a tab you can play aloud — watch, listen, then play along.
I’ll finish this introduction with a thought. When I was at the beginning of my journey, studying darbuka in London, I asked my teacher how long I should spend practising.
My teacher replied, “About an hour.”
I said, “An hour a week, that’s doable…”
My teacher replied, “I meant an hour a day.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed.
Let’s get started!