Research

Below is my Masters Thesis, written in 2018 about learning guitar in Mali and then teaching it back in Dublin in 2017

Playing a Bobo wedding, Bamako, April 2017

‘Talking to one man sharpens the wits of another’ - traditional Bambara saying

Lessons from a period of Malian musical enculturation and their subsequent application through pedagogical transmission

Paddy Groenland

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Approaching World Music
   1.1 Study Aims
   1.2 Personal Artistic Journey
   1.3 Transcultural Music Making
   1.4 Musical Eduction
   1.5 Musical Enculturation

2. Lessons From Bamako
   2.1 Mali
   2.2 Teaching Styles
   2.3 Adapting To Surroundings

3. Teaching Time
   3.1 Guitar Workshops Overview
   3.2 Workshop Reports

4. Reflections
   4.1 World Music Pedagogy Goals
  4.2 New pedagogical aids
   4.3 Ethics
   4.4 Contextualising

5. Conclusions

References

This written reflection is for the Nordic Master of Global Music (Glomas) at Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts, Helsinki. Part of the study programme has taken place at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark.

Taking into account the three areas of the Glomas studies; performance, pedagogy & research, this reflection begins after leading a series of 6 ‘African Guitar Workshops’ held in Dublin during late 2017 shortly after a research trip to Mali.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank the open-hearted Glomas teachers and staff, and my fellow students in Helsinki and Aarhus. I’m grateful to the program for the opportunity to travel to Mali and undertake this study, and to Finland for facilitating this program.

Thanks to my supervisor Laura Miettinen, and to my family for their help over the course of these past years.

Finally, thanks to my Malian teachers and hosts - aniche for sharing your warmth and energy.

1 Approaching World music

1.1 Aim of this study

Returning from studying music in Bamako, Mali, I held a series of six African Guitar workshops in Dublin. Before then I had not formally led a class on African or World music in Ireland. This report examines how I transmitted the music through teaching and performance after having recently learned it myself. My aim is to reflect upon my experiences of studying and living in Mali, and to detect any pedagogical tools and philosophies that were not present before my trip, investigating how I have assimilated them into my teaching & performing and noting what arose from learning & transmitting the music in my workshops.

Some of the questions that lead this reflection are:

How can I best represent the music of another culture?
What are the ethics of teaching African music to guitarists in Ireland?
What did I learn from my time in Mali that could supplement my musical life - teaching and performing?
Could I use the framework of African music to develop methods of study for deeper study of topics like improvisation and rhythm for Western guitarists and musicians unfamiliar with the style?

1.2 Personal artistic journey

In 2007 I had the opportunity, aged 20, to study on an Erasmus year abroad in Leuven, Belgium, from my host Irish University, NUI Maynooth. I had spent my first year at Maynooth studying 4-part harmony and fulfilling the early requirements of a Classical music degree, which was interesting if not particularly exciting. As a guitarist listening to Miles Davis CDs back in my student accommodation I wondered if there were others out there listening to this combination of free improvisation, grooves and ambient sounds from Miles’ late 60s period. Having a background in religious choral music, rock and blues bands, Stevie Wonder, and subsequently classical guitar - primarily as a vehicle to continue to study music at university level - I was searching for my place in music.

My theoretical knowledge and technique grew from attempts to play songs and, to the chagrin of my Classical guitar teacher, I silently rebelled against Classical technical studies. Although I enjoyed some aspects, I strongly disliked being pushed to practise for competitions (which I reluctantly did). I yearned for a sympathetic teacher who could guide me through the romantic South American classical guitar pieces, the freedom of Miles Davis melodies & chords that I enjoyed listening to at home and the harmony & voice leading of classical music.

This venn diagram of interests was shared by a Belgian guitarist & teacher Pierre van Dormael who would soon become my guru and reference point for a jazz musician and teacher. I realised later that Pierre was an unusually open minded musician and jazz teacher, he had lived in Dakar, Senegal for two years, teaching jazz locally and simultaneously learning West African music. He had recorded with local traditional musicians and also later released his own music - an esoteric mix of African rhythmic principles, jazz chromaticism and soulful melody.

I idolised Pierre for our shared interests that he lived through his musical life. In his analysis & ensemble classes we analysed West African rhythm - in his book Four Principles to Understand Music (Van Dormael, 2010) Pierre outlines a theory of ‘rhythmic harmony’ alongside Bach & Miles Davis and this appreciation of what I would later recognise as World Music set a valuable precedent.

I would later get to study at Berklee College of Music, Boston (with the help of Pierre who had studied there years previous) and there I took extensive classes in Brazilian music (with a Brazilian teacher), African rhythm (with both West African & American teachers) and Indian rhythmic solfege (with a Swedish teacher). The sharing of information via native and non-native sources or instructors was a fascination as I had gone to America intent on studying jazz ‘natively’ with Americans.

1.3 Transcultural Music Making

Returning to Ireland from Boston in 2010 I spent the following years drawn to forming and joining musical projects where cultures, world music, improvisation and jazz intersected with each other. The spark of improvisation that led me to jazz was replaced by the recontextualizing of styles and sense of freedom I found in creating both mixtures of styles.

A transcultural exchange is defined by Schippers (2010) as referring to an ‘in-depth exchange of approaches and ideas’ - the utmost hybridism where musics have taken on characteristics of more than one culture to become specific genres in their own right (p. 32). I spent some years initiating musical collaborations with musicians from unfamiliar backgrounds (Irish traditional mixed with ECM jazz in Leafzang, Brazilian music mixed with funk in Baque Soul, Congolese mixed with jazz with Niwel Tsumbu) and in playing as ‘authentically’ as possible in Dublin-based West African music group Manden Express. Enjoying how deep into the culture I could go (for instance I gradually learned Portuguese to speak to my Brazilian colleagues).

Such collaborations required nuance and creativity and I enjoyed informally researching - through listening and imitating - the source music and seeing how I might then play it with my own voice or accent and leading to the creation of our own music. This is what Campbell calls the ‘high water-mark of the process of musically educating students’ (Campbell 2016, p. 99). Transcultural exchange was my sincere goal well before the term was known, and although a relationship may never be truly equal, nor can collaboration be objectively defined as transcultural, the intention of these experiences has defined the exchange.

1.4 Musical eduction

I have been teaching privately since my teenage years, so joining the Global Music Masters Program (GLOMAS) at the Sibelius Academy beginning 2015 seemed like a natural progression and, as part of the studies I travelled to research music in Mali for two months in 2017. Until studying at Glomas I had not spent much time reflecting on the processes or ethics surrounding this free-wheeling cross-cultural pollination, perhaps because my parents are from Ireland & the Netherlands and I have typically felt uncomfortable being constrained by one definition of myself. I was comfortable in my ‘mixedness’ and sense of flexibility that this allows: while living in America my speaking voice changed significantly to ‘fit in’.

I had largely not enjoyed the pedagogy of Berklee as there was an attitude of more is more, with a menu of literally thousands of classes on option. Constant assessment through in-class exams allowed measurement of grades, which feeds the American education model, but also ignores other methods of learning. I saw this American experience as a necessary evil because it forced me to ingest a huge amount of information - how much was retained is debatable. Another aspect of Berklee, at least in the jazz department, was an element of bravado among the almost exclusively male faculty, possibly borne out of virtuosity and an expectation to perform with excellence every time. This tendency was shared by male Malian musicians, and I see this resulting from a sense of devotion to music with the unfortunate effect of basing one’s self-image on one’s performance abilities.

Göran Folkestad (2006 p.139) defines musical eduction as ‘bringing forth and/or developing the capacities, abilities and aptitudes that already potentially exist in the student. In this process the teacher is like a gardener, creating good conditions for learning to take place.’ In contrast to Berklee, studying in Finland I found a pedagogical approach that echoes Folkestad’s definition of musical eduction: rather than teachers there were facilitators, no grades and an encouragement for experience and positive application over immediate excellence. I continue to draw from this pedagogical approach and made attempts to integrate it into my African guitar workshops (and future private & group lessons). I continue to aim to draw from both experiences - Berklee & Glomas, which I saw as complementary and not mutually exclusive.

1.5 Musical Enculturation

Since 2010, I had been internalising West African melodies (with Manden Express), Congolese guitar styles, Tanzanian songs while at Glomas and had at this point written and released pieces in the style of West & South African music, therefore I felt I had a good grasp of a pan-African ‘repertoire’ although I sensed a lack of musical enculturation, defined by Lucy Green as ‘the acquisition of musical skills and knowledge by immersion in the everyday music and musical practices of one’s social context’ (Green, 2007, p. 22).
This resulted in a sense of diminished authenticity from my transmissions & performances that I hoped would be changed by immersing myself in Mali and it’s music. I loved listening the Wassolou grooves of Oumou Sangare, Salif Keita’s Jeli-inspired funk, Bassekou Kouyate’s Hendrix-like approach to the ngoni and BKO’s fusion of Malian styles, and the guitar lines seemed to come from another planet. Furthermore I had watched American Banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck’s documentary (Throw Down Your Heart, 2008) in which he traces the roots of his instrument multiple times and his account of meeting Mali musicians was inspiring - he made it clear that out of the various stops in his trip around Africa, Bamako impressed him the most in terms of musicianship.

2 Lessons from Bamako

2.1 Mali

“Everyone told me if it’s guitar you want, go to Mali. But no recording… prepared me for what I found there” (Banning Eyre, 1994)

I stayed - lived - in Bamako for two summer months, with Ibrahima Sarr, the master Djembe player and member of the BKO Quintet (now called BKO), in the central neighbourhood Medina Coura. The initiation into my musical enculturation was to be mentally & physically intense, yet after three weeks I was travelling alone to different teachers’ houses to take individual hour lessons, which, usually meant several hours of tuition, discussion (through my limited French) and eating with my teachers’ family.

Here between the dusty, chaotic streets and eating rice with my hands alongside my teacher's family I felt an intense immersion - my inner being engaged by an instinct to survive. On my first day in a neighbouring Bamako street, I watched a young boy performing as part of a wedding band, smacking two stacked chairs that acted as a snare drum. His purity of intent and focus playing the chairs as an instrument felt like something I had rarely seen in Europe and it was the first of many powerful musical experiences.

I stayed in a small room with one fan that regularly turned off due to power shortages, and, was the only white person in the neighbourhood - other westerners I met in Bamako were surprised to hear this but I told them - possibly trying to convince myself also - that I was looking for a genuine experience. I felt challenged but not impossibly so. In the context of my musical eduction while in Mali, the ‘gardener’ was as much informal as formal, as much environment, food and background noise as my individual lessons. While I could do a convincing impression of a Bassekou Kouyate solo before going to Mali, It is impossible to separate my experience of living in Bamako from the music that I learnt there and am forever altered by this experience.

In his book, Ryan Thomas Skinner states that that ‘popular music is seen, smelled, and tasted as much as it is heard in Bamako-’ (Skinner, 2005, p. 101). I performed in two weddings; early in my stay fumbling on a Djembe alongside my host Ibrahima and later, much more successfully, on guitar with Bobo musicians Lamine & Idrissa Kone. Recalling the experiences induces a sense of synesthesia - the memory of the incredible heat, the smell of the food, the vibrantly coloured dresses and the distorted speakers.

Musically (and culturally to an extent) there was a distinction regularly pointed out to me between pentatonique (deriving from tribes and ethnicities like Bambara, Bobo, Wassolou, Donso) heptatonique (Jeli songs, ancient Mande praise singer and oratory style) and the northern desert styles (Puel and Tuareg). The jeli (French griot) musical families (like Diabate, Keita) perform long, ornate, improvised verses of praise at weddings and ceremonies and exclusivity to this role is hereditary. Although the griots are treated with reverence the musicians that I studied with played griot music. There is a fluidity to daily Bamako musical life, just as there is a fluidity to my musical life.

Despite access to the internet, the Malians I met seemed only to be interested in handful of westerners; Michael Jackson and some football players. Seeing Bamako is a heterogeneous mix of ethnic groups - each with strong and proud identities - this refreshing lack of globalism is also borne out through the music. I felt a sense that the guitar was a sort of ‘leveller’ instrument in Mali, as each of my guitar teachers made a point of referencing what instrument their individual stylistic elements and articulations were influenced by - typically either the small n’goni (banjo-like instrument without frets), mbalafon (wooden xylophone) & donso ngoni (⅚ string harp bass). I thus began to perceive Malian music in terms of internal ethnicity, surrounding geography (such as Burkina Faso and Senegal) and by instrument. Skinner (2015, p. 86) further describes how, in the local language of Bambara, Malians use the same verb ‘to speak’ to also mean ‘to play (an instrument)’, therefore one plays an instrument as one speaks a language. Across elements of music I hear in Bamako I learned to recognise the related similarity of expressions across this spectrum of sub groupings.

2.2 Teaching styles

I had intended on taking multiple lessons with as many guitarists (and some djembe/calabash lessons) as I could find, knowing how rich the musical landscape is in Mali, opting over a period of intense study with one or two teachers. The musicians I met were dedicated and immersed in their musical lives, and their personalities were intertwined with what they played and how they played. As it transpired, out of twelve teachers I revisited less than half, finding some more suited to my learning methods than others. I will briefly describe some of the characters during my stay.

Ibrahima Sarr - the boss of the house, and of the block and the son of Senegalese Wolof immigrants. Although I never took a lesson with him, I played a wedding with him as a backup Djembe player and I watched him rehearse with BKO extensively as rehearsals took play in the house. Ibrahima commanded great respect due to his musical legacy, having toured & recorded with Oumou Sangare and for composing many Djembe ‘breaks’ or calls for standard repertoire played in Bamako clubs. He played Djembe ‘like a majestic bird, hair flapping like a kite in the wind’. Frith (as cited in Skinner, 2005, p. 101) notes that ‘In Bamako, when people say, “This sounds good,” they are also saying, “This is good”, Likewise, when someone says, “This sounds bad,” there is the implication that good sociability has been upset by a breach of assumed ethical behavior.’ Ibrahima tended to look at me with visible disgust when I made a mistake (I made many while playing Djembe) and simply gestured to lift my hands higher.

Aymeric - my connection to Ibrahima whom I met at WOMEX 2016. A white frenchman and percussionist/drummer he had been travelling to Mali for 14 years, studying with Ibrahima and subsequently setting up BKO. He spoke fluent Bambara and was the administrative brains behind BKO, organising tours around Europe and Africa for the group. He helped me settle and was a ‘big brother’ of sorts for the first week. A forceful personality, he demonstrated how I had to fight for what I needed in Mali, almost to the point that I felt rude - perhaps shattering my perception of how I would be perceived as a cultural tourist. Our conversations were often intertwined with discussions on rhythm & local culture and he took great pride in the fact that his BKO were the only group intertwining the previously separate Bambara and Griot cultures.
Sekou Coulibaly - an unassuming (the Coulibaly families seemed to be at the end of jokes from all Malians and so maybe this explains his humble disposition) and brilliant elegant guitarist, who was playing almost every night around the city and country and occasionally travelled to France for tours. He could seamlessly demonstrate any Malian style. He had previously taught Western guitarists and so could break down musical elements into smaller chunks for me to loop, and also knew all the different interlocking parts to a groove. Sekou was by far my best pedagogue and tended towards using articulations translated from the (small) n’goni - characterised by rapidfire harp attacks between close notes, emulate by the plectrum.

Adama Coulibaly - one of two rotating donso Ngoni (large 6-string pentatonic low instrument) players in BKO. My first lesson in Mali was with Adama, whose tradition focuses on solo or duo performance yet in BKO he played the role of the bass. He was upbeat and smiling, happy to repeat the riffs until I got them. We played two riffs in our hour-long lesson and one is permanently ingrained in my memory as I have developed it for an outro of a song I wrote. We had difficulty communicating and so he just started playing, my recording from this lesson is punctuated by laughter from both of us.

N’Faly Diakate - the second donso Ngoni player who had been in BKO - introverted and often possibly intoxicated - but trouble seemed to follow him around. Him teaching me inside the Sarr house represented some sort of olive branch as he had been kicked out of the band previously, and part of my payment to him went straight to Ibrahima. I was somewhat politically ‘locked’ into taking these lessons and so used them to learn as many Donso songs as I could - beautiful hypnotic mantra songs that seemed to change shape with each performance. I felt, and still feel, that his voice was the most beautiful male Malian voice I had heard (even before arriving as his singing is featured on the first BKO CD) but Aymeric and Ibrahima discounted this somewhat flippantly, citing the Jeli lead singer Fassara Sacko as ‘the real Malian style’.

Papis Diabate - son of the guitarist in the legendary Bamako ‘Rail Band’, he continued this lineage. He explained that his guitar lines came from the mbalafon (wooden xylophone) and that was why his Bambara guitar style was often in demand. Papis had travelled to USA to teach and had very good English. He made a point of not charging me more than I needed to pay and also that I ‘tell Europeans’ that I got these guitar lines from Papis Diabate. His were some of the hardest rhythms to conquer, as they seemed to typically start one partial away from a strong beat.

Lamine Kone - from the Bobo ethnicity (Christian minority originated from Burkina Faso. Their music can sound like an acoustic version of American funk.). Lamine afforded me a lot of time and we became friends. His cousin Idrissa plays guitar for Malian star Habib Koite and both he & Lamine invited me to play with them at a Bobo wedding ceremony towards the end of my stay. Lamine could play guitar, bass, calabash (gourd percussion) and probably more instruments. His classes were the most informal, I stayed with him for hours while his family walked in and out of the room.

Adama Drame - older man who played multiple styles. He spent most of our only lesson talking about his fame and experience, trying to get me to pay more on account of him having two wives. This was the least enjoyable student experience, and his method of transmission was to repeat long phrases therefore I couldn’t catch the whole structure. It is interesting to compare my real life experience with subsequent readings of Luis Giminez Amoros (2014, p. 3) referencing Drame’s multimusicality as the ‘symmetrical and asymmetrical musical and social relationships of his musical knowledge in regards to his national culture,’ and that this multimusicality makes reference to a ‘national, postcolonial geographical space such as Mali where there are different musical cultures coexisting’ (2014, p. 12). Existing a musician in Bamako is competitive and clearly requires a high level of skill and flexibility.

Modi Cissoko - very experience older man who barely played guitar anymore (except for playing reggae songs!) yet could remember all the interlocking lines from the older style of Bambara orchestral music. His technique was so rusty that transmission was extremely difficult - he had great difficulty playing the same phrase the same way twice, however, he provided a unique insight.

I had not expected each lesson to be so different in terms of approach, length, and structure, and there are even more accounts I could have included. I was encouraged to record lessons and the teachers were usually interested to talk about the various other lessons that I had taken or had planned to take. I was fortunate to have been granted access so freely into the worlds of these musicians, and I found myself regularly concluding that music can act as a passport to different parts of the world. Bamako musicians who perhaps first viewed me with suspicion became instantly friendly when I listed off Malian music that I genuinely adored. Mali was, and still is at time of writing, Ireland’s most dangerous category ‘do not travel’ list, and, had I not felt a strong affinity to these musicians I would have certainly felt more wary about my presence there.

2.3 Adapting to surroundings

In her article, Juliet Hess (2013, p. 69) asks; ‘Can we meet a music on its own terms, fostering both ethics and reciprocity?’ As described in every set of experiences above, it was near impossible to take a lesson from a teachers without becoming involved in their life. The music was not available on it’s own, or rather it came to me on it’s own terms. In Bamako one soon realises that an elaborate greeting ritual, extended eye contact and firm handshakes are a prerequisite to almost every conversation. All of the teachers were chuffed to receive calls from a westerner who had been advised to visit them for a lesson, and each one reacted slightly differently to that dynamic - although I was visiting from a place of privilege by comparison, I was often travelling to an unknown place alone and in good faith, and was open to be taken advantage of. This happened in a minority of cases.

Typically my lessons started in confusion as teacher and student attempted to settle on a topic, and subsequently it took me about twenty minutes to get a hold on the complicated rhythms and/or articulations. In nearly every class the teacher seemed surprise about how ’quickly’ I had learnt thereafter, inferring to me that their initial impression of my abilities were low due to my utter confusion. I interpret this in part a cultural learning difference - I’m used to a western pedagogical model that starts slowly, introducing various parts and finally recapitulating to assemble the chunks together, whereas in my Malian lessons I was typically shown the full piece from the start and expected to chip away at it, occasionally alongside with posturing or words of mild condensation from my teacher. Those instances made things harder for me to learn the material of course - as opposed to when I was encouraged - but I tried to persevere with the open mind of a student and of each class as an ear-training exercise.
I wrote that ‘I have to almost show them how to teach me’, and so it was to great relief when a teacher like Seckou or Papis could present the material step-by-step. It was interesting to watch the BKO group in rehearsal struggle with an arrangement of Mon amour which was softer, slower and more delicate than the other songs. The song was to ‘appeal to the french market’ according to Aymeric, and the four Malians in the group were less comfortable with the form of the song, which relied more upon recognising larger structures and less audible cues.

This reinforced to me that Malian musicians are comfortable improvising and responding to cues - both processes that demand active listening and attentiveness, and are less accustomed to reciting a set structure. In formal & informal performances I attended in Bamako there was an electric sense of being present, in the moment, or if that was not there, the musicians actively brought this energy forthwith. Almost every songs that started slow in a Bamako performance ended very fast and with audience participation to clap.

I felt an emphasis in everyday life, and in my lessons - do more, analyse less.. I was approaching the classes with an analytical mind and finding the differences & similarities between the ethnic styles, between Bambara and Jeli, between rhythmic phrases and articulations very interesting. If I was having difficulty understanding a part, I could initialise a call & response or looping of a section without much communicative difficulty.

Analysis comes after the event, and so perhaps my in-class analysis had the effect of momentary paralysis on the flow of the lesson. In most cases, I was following in the footsteps of two - both brilliant and virtuosic - western guitarists who had given me the teachers’ contact details. The teachers made a point of praising these guitarists and I couldn't help but feel unfavourably compared although my focus was as much on trying to record myself the different parts of the composition as much as it was improvising - something that all the teachers loved doing.

In each lesson I was taught a composition - we jumped straight in into melody and accompaniment, there was no preparatory techniques or ‘studies’. As far as I know, no African-written pedagogical piece of music is a part of the musical canon in the way that etudes & studies are in classical music, whereby the piece of music is appraised on it’s own musical terms and not just as a study piece. In African music, the song is the vehicle for any techniques, and only if the technique is not working, the song stops to examine technique closer.

In western classical music we have devised endless preparatory studies that have the intention of foreseeing technical problems ahead, and indeed this approach has been used in jazz & folk pedagogy too, and such a method assumes diligent step-by-step progress (for instance the Suzuki method). Perhaps the non-linearity of progress and of musical comprehension suffers within this method as it demands all-or-nothing conformity.

The Kodaly method seems closer to the African model of learning as it includes rhythms, dance, call & response, and peer directed learning. The very fact that we in the west make the distinction of peer-directed learning is a fundamental difference to the African learning experience, even at university level. Sitting in the the Institut National des Arts, the central music university in Bamako I watched students practise together, sometimes side by side in the same room for hours. If a student wants to engage a teacher in private lessons outside of the school the relationship takes on a master and disciple dynamic, in which student is beholden to the teacher. Adame Drame referred to that relationship as a means of persuading I should pay him more or at least, buy his tea and sugar. (While I paid him the going rate for a lesson to a Westerner he seemed to also want the symbolic action of buying tea and sugar, perhaps to emphasise his sense of status).

3 Teaching time

Taking this experience home with me I, admittedly, experienced more culture shock upon returning to Europe than arriving in Bamako. Although full of inspiration and music, I wasn’t expecting to initially feel so confused, different, lonely and cold. I was struggling to find my place again, and to find work, and so it seemed natural to hold some classes and look for students, despite some reticence over organising my first workshops in my home city. I will outline each of the sessions as documented by me at the time.

3.1 Guitar workshops overview

The African guitar workshops took place in dublin on 6 successive Saturdays and as I made the classes open to both subscription (payment for all 6) and drop in (price per class) each class was a different group of guitarists. As the workshops progressed I typically structured two topics over two hours, beginning with the most difficult, then breaking and returning to begin a less difficult topic and finally, recapping with the first topic. Each member brought their own acoustic guitar.

3.2 Workshop reports

Workshop 1: 9 people, topic: North Malian music

I began by getting the class to do some warm-up techniques but some of the older male students were clearly averse to this. In any case, it started the class.

In this first class I introduced a topic of high difficulty - Takamba rhythm. This rhythm is similar to a flamenco 12 beat pattern in that the accents within the cycle change from 3 3 2 2 2.
This was new to everyone and although I knew the topic well, I couldn’t offer much additional guidance or smaller steps to get the students to a point of success.

The ‘Malian’ plectrum technique was covered, as well as the pentatonic scale (Root, 2, 4, 5 m7).
As I was asking students to cover three new elements (plectrum technique, new scale/mode, new rhythmic cycle) I was asking a lot from the students, many of whom had no previous experience in the area.

We had success performing two interlocking riffs over the Takamba rhythm, everyone was at a good level that they could perform this in time. Going around the room I asked each person to take a short solo as the interlocking riffs played quietly underneath, and most reacted with more nerves and discomfort than I had hoped. Probably the difficulty level and my demeanour of trying hard to succeed contributed to this.

Although I felt that we achieved something noteworthy in terms of difficulty, I sensed that the students weren’t as satisfied as I had hoped particularly because the class ‘fizzled out’ somewhat. I can learn to end the sessions better although I was a bit nervous which did not help.

Workshop 2: 4 people, Topic: West African Kora parts for fingerstyle guitar

I introduced a piece from my solo EP - Djigui - that I learnt and extensively developed from a recording made by my aforementioned teacher Pierre Van Dormael. This essentially has two interlocking parts, a simple bassline and a complicated melody.

Rather than the group learn the full melody I spent the time focusing on the accompaniment part while I occasionally played the melody over them. The piece is in 6 and can be felt as 3 half notes and/or as 4 dotted quarters simultaneously, so a polyrhythmic feel. This was useful because we could reuse the same material but learn to ‘feel’ it from a different perspective.

This allowed for use of a popular mnemonic device ‘pass the golden butter’ - which when spoken conveys the hybrid rhythm of 3 and 4 together. This led to a wider discussion on rhythmic feel.

We made variations on the instrumental application of the riffs (doubling the bassline in octaves, bringing the parts in and out). We discussed the harmonic language for improvisation in this style (similar to last week) which served as a reminder for the two students who had attended the previous week.

I realised that repeating material is not boring for the students, in fact quite the opposite they enjoyed the reinforcing of material and did not feel the need to introduce new material that I felt. The song Djigui is so pleasing to play I felt a sense of success after this session.

Workshop 3: 7 people, Topic: Tanzanian guitar styles

This was an excellent class in which I ended the session singing. We began talking about the overtone scale as used in Wagogo music and adapted it to guitar. This covered harmonics and scale theory.

We also covered slurs on the guitar and similar to last week, took an interlocking, polyrhythmic guitar part that I had developed from a kalimba performance. This led us to talk about polyrhythms again, and this time we used the mnemonic device for 2 over 3 ‘hot cup of tea’.

I later introduced another Tanzanian derived pattern, this time a complicated djembe pattern in 6 applied to a chord sequence. The class really enjoyed it, although none of them could play it! Perhaps the way I played the part created a comfortable base for practising triplet rhythms, which is what we subsequently did. I asked the class to improvise over this triplet based pattern using focused rhythmic ideas, and this time the reception was better than Workshop number 1.

Using six variations of triplet rhythms on the whiteboard I asking students to choose one or more of the rhythms as a basis for improvisation, which was more successful than basing their improvisations on a scale. This approach comes from my jazz studies and worked really well in this instance. The students could enjoy a feeling of rhythmic success in their improvisations and I made a point of trying to praise the students as much as I could.

When we recapped, I sang the accompanying song for the Agogo piece which I could feel really settled the room and left us all leaving on a high.

Workshop 4: 3 people, Topic: West African guitar

This class was focused and comfortable and although small in attendance, the level was high. We made good progress within the two hours.

We played Djigui again improvising within one ‘position’ of the scale, attempting to internalise the sound and feel of the harmonic restriction. I introduced a Donso piece I had learnt from N’Faly - ‘Suban Kononi’. This is a great song and has number of bassline options. There is a ‘root rhythm’ of 3 3 2 that can be developed to be more ornate and we went through five developments.

We played with some call and response, and also developed some basslines in the group. I set it up so that each person had the experience of coming up with a riff on the spot, and then the others echoed that riff. This was satisfying for everyone involved.

We discussed turning a 2 bar riff into a 4 bar, then 16 bar cycle with variations as a basis for jamming and improvising off of a small amount of material. I felt very comfortable with this small group and we achieved a lot within the session. I began using a tambourine as a metronome, tapping on it with my foot.

Workshop 5: 3 people, Topic: Malian & Tanzanian/Congolese styles

Once again it was a small but dedicated group. We covered the root rhythm and different rhythmic levels of Suban Kononi and how it related to the cuban and latin concept of Clave, and how that rhythm is omnipresent in world and pop music.

I improvised a riff for the students to play as a variation of Suban Kononi. This riff used elements of the Malian plectrum technique that is so elusive. I wanted them to conquer one or two of these articulations. Again we used interlocking riffs but this time I improvised a countermelody or second riff that resided in the ‘cracks’ of the root rhythm. All together this sounded wonderful and allowed us to practise improvising in turns.

I introduced another Tanzanian song Kowayelele, that I enjoy playing and singing. It uses standard chords but unfamiliar rhythms in the right hand, so this balance of the known with the unknown was popular, plus the song has a built-in call & response section which is fun. I talked a bit about the Congolese Soukous style of soloing and demonstrated techniques to achieve it.

There was a nice balance of difficulty and student enjoyment in this class. I presented the topic and then waited for questions, which I would then use to talk about theory or technique. It was a small but mature and eager group and I felt very relaxed, more like facilitator than teacher.

In this class I identified my optimal approach for the structure of a workshop - stay on topic A for an hour, go deep into it, break, then come back to topic B (lighter material) then recap in last 15 minutes with Topic A. I found that through this structure the sense of satisfaction through reinforcement for the students is ideal.

Workshop 6: 4 students, Topic: Malian music

We revised the same pieces again. Once more I find myself using the same material, or rather, recycling the material and developing it.

I delegated more responsibility onto the students this time, allowing and encouraging them to lead the group. We went over the same topics; ornamentation, riffs, rhythm.
I attempted to give the minimal information for the students to sound Malian - so rather than attempt to show them how to be creative within a vast topic within one class, I gave them specific goals through mimicking. I could sense anxiety from the students but I enjoyed this rather loose or haphazard approach that was focused on getting there quickly, disregarding any dogma about authenticity. Upon reflection this is how I enjoyed many guitar lessons in Mali.
I had wanted to play another intricate piece, but we couldn't do it within the 2 hours today. We could have struggled with it and maybe finished it but I ultimately decide that feeling happy was more important than completing my assigned curriculum. Again I sang at the end, and this always lifts the mood of the workshop. I worked in a call & response section to Suban Kononi by getting the students to echo the vocal call on the guitar.

To summarise, over six workshops we covered a range of topics from West and East African music. I had intentions to cover some South African music, and had requests from the students to cover some Nigerian afrobeat, but I couldn’t fit them in. One of the main challenges of the workshop series was learning how to balance amount and difficulty of content against student enjoyment, alongside a changing student personnel each week and each student with their own area of interest.

4 Reflections

I will reflect upon the dialogue between my two areas of documented experiences; my Malian lessons and the subsequently teaching of African guitar workshops in Dublin. Although in some respects the two are very different experiences, there are enough similarities that throughout the process I found myself comparing cultures and questioning conventions - as travellers tend to do. Somewhat paradoxically, I have experienced that through comparative study of other cultures we tend to improve the understanding of our own.

4.1 World music pedagogy goals

Patricia Campbell (2016, p. 96) suggests a method for understanding the phases of transmitting world music:

1) attentive listening – the initial exposure to elements & structures
2) engaged listening – active participation ‘participatory musicking’ and learning by doing
3) enactive listening – an earnest attempt to recreate with nuances to a performance level
4) creating world music – adding extensions to the music, improvisations & new compositions
5) integrating world music – connections to life, context

Small has established the widely used term ‘musicking’ as a holistic term to understand the participatory and active state of musical involvement and the relationships around the music (Small, 1998), and I interpret Campbell’s use of the term to specify a meaning beyond say, the cold reproduction of unfamiliarly sight-reading a passage:

As the workshops developed, I found myself growing in confidence in my ability to diffuse any tension that grew from not ‘succeeding’ if the tasks described in steps 1) through to 3) were difficult, by offering anecdotes about African culture, insights or personal comparison with western and Irish culture. This was successful in distracting students from any momentary frustration and reminding them of the context for this strange activity - learning about African music in a room in Dublin. Upon reflection I was slow to find a sense of comfort in guiding the classes to steps 4) and 5) of Campbell’s model, but when I did the class reacted well.

Two guitarists told me that they had not been to guitar lessons in many years before coming to my workshops, and they loved the classes, citing a need for classes like these. I wrote in my notes: ‘a lot of guitarists would like a positive music group experience and perhaps are not driven to continue beyond the experience itself - the pressure to continue with a group or band could sully that experience as it drives what might otherwise be fun musicking towards a goal.’ For me, musicking has meant being present with the music and it’s participants with positive intent, and this definition has developed significantly from my engagements in world music in which technical ability and ‘correctness’ were not alone sufficient factors in achieving the full potential of a musical situation.

4.2 New Pedagogical aids

As Malian pentatonic music tends to be built around a central groove with interlocking and corresponding parts together it can be hard to comprehend where to begin analysing it. The method in which I learnt to assimilate Donso music from N’Faly and Bob music from Lamine & Idriss Kone both followed a similar path. I would listen out for the essential root rhythm - my term - and build in complexity from that. Often this was a survival mechanism as the rhythms could easily disorientate and this is how N’Faly and the Kones taught me if they saw me struggling. I began to interpret layers of rhythmic activity in an attempt to categorise musical elements and I subsequently taught this in my workshops.

As Donso music is usually played by one pitched instrument alongside percussion, this method is clearer: N’Faly learnt to break things down for me but also to present the development of one riff, and, in a Donso performance the riff develops as the song gains ‘heat’ or intensity. I borrowed this technique in my workshops and also used it to teach non-Malian music.

In the case of the Kones, when I performed my second wedding (Bobo), I was given the intro to the song to catch the riff, and if i didn't get the full, ornate, complicated guitar part, Lamine or Idrissa started playing a simpler version of the same riff. On one particularly challenging occasion I recall him simplifying it several times.

In this way perhaps the Malians were working backwards to a point of simplicity - the root - which was to become my departure point when teaching the same material. In the worst cases, my Malian teachers simply played the same part at speed until I got it. My best learning experiences came from when the teacher slowed the part down and simplified it, giving me the root or scaffolding on which to develop the music. Thus this dissection was to become my own approach too and I now consider this as standard operation when transmitting new material. I wrote in my diary: ‘maybe my role in this process is to show the fun side of this music without the unnecessary level of difficulty that I went through?’, and this approach helped students enjoy the learning process.

I had, as previously mentioned, learned one lesson while in Mali which was do more, analyse less. During workshop three, a student had asked to notate the music, and although I made a point of telling the class that preferred if we learnt it by ear (I encouraged in-class recording and sent my revision videos to the class afterwards), he went ahead and notated it. He wasn’t having and issue with playing by ear, but he wanted to do it anyway, perhaps out of habit. I found myself (unfairly) getting frustrated with this, and I interpreted his enthusiasm to notate and contribute as putting western notation on a higher footing than learning by ear. In fact he was analysing the music in the way he normally does. The irony of my frustration is that I was using my Western-derived methods to analyse African music, just in my own particular way, furthermore I had also previously notated the material for various purposes.

Green (2007, p. 178) refers to the curious phenomena of musicians (both schooled and self-taught) themselves not teaching others how they best learn themselves, in other words, unconsciously perpetuating poor pedagogical practices. Although I sincerely wanted the students to ‘get it’, I noticed a tension between the bravado of my Malian pedagogy - (and most of my jazz training) that would perpetuate dumping the material onto the student and expecting them to reassemble it - and my Glomas experience that had encouraged patience and breaking material down into smaller chunks, just as I had required in Mali.

4.3 Ethics

Hess (2013, p. 67) describes teaching “African Drumming & Dancing” to a Canadian class;

This course is actually the study of Ghanaian music and not of music that is somehow indigenous to the entire continent of Africa as the name suggests. The title plays on stereotypes and images that students hold of Africa and “African” music’.

I felt this apprehension when a friend commented on my use of a vintage poster of an African guitar player for the workshop event. Should I not have used a picture of me playing? I did advertise the classes with videos of me demonstrating excerpts of the styles to be covered, but, I did momentarily feel guilty of essentializing a culture and therefore open to the accusation that this might ‘preclude the possibility of any encounter beyond the superficial’ (Hess 2013, p. 73) Hess continues to state that this ‘commodification of otherness’ can mean that ethnicity becomes a ‘spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture’.

But what of an alternative? I felt emboldened by my experiences in Mali - I would never have taught a class like this before visiting Bamako, despite the fact that some of the topics i taught - like Tanzanian music and my Kora arrangements for solo guitar - were not specifically Malian and had developed long before visiting Mali. I felt altered, musically encultured after my trip and thus more self assured as I could draw from personal experience. De Beauvoir (as cited in Skinner 2015, p. 9) asserts that ‘there is an ethics only if there is a problem to solve’ and, there had been an innocence and naivety to my initial entry point into African music. The problem came later with the realisation that my western privilege afforded me this peek into African culture, perhaps I was lucky to have met a mentor like Pierre van Dormael who was dedicated to transcultural music making.

Campbell (2016, p. 102) identifies three recurring problematic intentions of authenticity in transmitting world music: trying to achieve a credible sound, seeking to represent the culture and honoring the cultural context in all manners. Wary of such intentions I decided that I could convey the spirit of my trip - how I learned and my personal relationship to the music, which had become intimate. I hoped students would understand the feel - at least that was how I set out. I provided drinks and snacks on the first day of the workshop (this practise fizzled out) on a table adorned with colourful ‘African’ print (ironically this material is usually imported from Germany & the Netherlands) and I continued to do this as the room was bare and didn’t really match the subject.

Wary of promoting what Hess (2013, p. 66) astutely refers to the ‘politics of self-congratulation’, I was mindful to make references to how and where the music came to me and to the lineage of the music - and to the effects of European colonialism - with the intent of positioning myself as a cultural vessel rather than culture bearer. To present myself as the latter would be ridiculous, because even if I was African, or Malian, as Hess succinctly puts it ‘surely, one man...cannot act as a cultural representative and translator for an entire culture’ (Hess, 2013, p. 89). Similarly, I would hate to be seen as a representative of Irish culture, although perhaps that is how I was sometimes viewed while abroad.

Similar to musicking, intent will also define how transmission of another culture’s music is assimilated. After a particular workshop, I was delighted that a new guitarist sent around a group email full of information about Malian music and history with the intent of sharing with fellow students. I felt that this indicated a level of success in my presenting of the workshop as a collaborative effort with a shared goal of researching and fostering a deeper understanding of the music and culture, furthermore I also learnt something useful from that email and I felt happy to report this back.

4.4 Contextualising

At Womex 2016 I had the opportunity to see a short showcase by Trio Da Kali, a contemporary griot group of vocal, balafon & bass n’goni. The performance was virtuosic, crystalline, majestic and soulful. All three wore traditional colourful dress (for many Malians this was in fact daily formal clothing) and, at a market for world music the band surely aimed to fulfill the role of culture bearer. I saw the same band later play an open air concert in Bamako, and the music was unrecognisable - a standard Bamako repertoire, longer & faster songs and with multiple guest Jeli singers and all the while the audience chatting lightly. Hess (2013, p. 74) states that ‘a living culture, in all its daily complexities, does not lie at the root of cultural tourism’. To avoid essentializing African music it’s important to reaffirm that it evolves organically, and while some sensibilities remain from (in this case) the 13th Century, others are more fluid and have changed dramatically in one lifetime. In this moment Malian music was alive, and Trio da Kali were flexible in their sensibilities to know their audience by dramatically changing their approach to what appeared to be the same concert.

There exists a Western-based notion (often unstated) of culture or high-culture referring essentially to classical music which implies that this route of disciplined study is more valuable than the processes of osmosis or unconscious learning. I might argue that context is everything - as shown by Trio da Kali - who gave the Womex audience the formal, near classical performance that they wanted. Musicians who like to continue performing are typically more flexible than dogmatic. In the same Womex day, Derek Gripper, a south African guitar player performed music by Malian Kora player Toumani Diabate alongside pieces by Bach, contextualising the Manden Kora music (with it’s 13th Century origins) as classical music, and Bach as world music.

Toumani’s son Sidiki Diabate - the 74th in a line of Jeli Kora players who have learnt orally from father to son - is also a hip-hop start in Mali, and I heard his dance beat mixed with Kora music can be heard all over Bamako. Skinner (2015, p. 3) reports Sidiki stating that ‘In my family, you are born into [jeliya],’ he says, ‘but when I’m here [in the recording studio], I’m a musician, not a jeli.’ In recent years Manden traditional music has adapted possibly more than the Western world music market would like it to do.

Another misconception of musical purity was dispelled from hearing songs by Oumou Sangare & Salif Keita performed both by bands and played on speakers regularly around Bamako. My Congolese friend in Ireland assured me that ‘no one in Africa listens to this music anymore’, but in fact the (obviously Western-aimed) successful albums of Sangare and Keita were massive hits in Bamako, and were still celebrated years later. The performed versions of these hit songs sounded quite different - faster, recontextualised, more percussion - but the music was part of the Malian canon.

I interpreted these experiences to mean that If Malians were okay to freely mix and match, changing the music depending on the performance context, then so could I. As conscientious educators (generally more than active performers), we can over-amplify the need to represent a style - to act as the culture bearer - even of culture closer to home. This route can lead to logical paralysis, for instance when Green refers to accounts of trainee primary teachers who had taken instrumental lessons as children, but had given them up in the early stages ’expressing even more anxiety about teaching music in the classroom than did their colleagues who had not had instrumental lessons!’ (Hennessy, as cited in Green 2016, p. 191).

While Campbell (2016) encourages that the overlay of world music pedagogy onto well-established pedagogical approaches may infuse new energy into them (p. 105), Green (2017) argues that as world music pedagogues we must be aware that the music has now entered the curricula as new content but not necessarily with any changes in teaching strategy, thereby riding the waves of established teaching methods (p. 184). I find that the tension between these two viewpoints can help educators decide on a suitable mix of used and lesser-used teaching strategies.

5 Conclusions

Revisiting my recordings and materials from Mali and from the subsequent workshops I am brought back to all the sensations and challenges presented within a period of only several months. Writing this work one year later and having performed a lot and having taught many further group and private lessons across multiple styles, ages and instruments, I can trace some of my current teaching traits and attitudes from this interesting period.

According to Renshaw (2011, p. 181-182) ‘cultural change is like the process of personal creativity. It occurs as a series of successive approximations.’ After the first workshop - worrying that I was trying too hard to act as a culture bearer and therefore feeding students too much information - I decided that within the limitation of a two hour session it was in fact best to impart some surface-level approximations. Perhaps I had (initially and subconsciously) wanted the students to know that learning the music was a hard experience for me and that the music was itself difficult. Perhaps a defense mechanism to feeling out of my comfort zone (particularly in this first class) was to validate my own abilities.

I had concluded that the equation of difficulty to enjoyment is a hangover from my experience of jazz pedagogy. In the defense of this pedagogy it can achieve goals quickly, and when employed well allied the Malian-learned mantra of do more, analyse less.

Using the material as a departure point for playing, improvising, focusing on a particular melodic and/or rhythmic device was a success (as opposed to sticking too closely to an exactness).
I trace this approach stemming from my jazz education - that is, momentary (improvised) analysing & dissecting music with a view to the source material as a momentary ‘study’ - as useful in a number of ways. By using the elements derived from the source material itself I imposed limits (e.g. use only this scale or this rhythm) creating short term target practise that reinforced a feeling of success, which took the focus away from exact mimicry and encouraged individuality.
Reading post-workshop diary entries I can see that I was coming to terms with sacrificing part of what I perhaps felt made the music sacred or special, while also satisfying the students who had paid to come and learn.

Can a formal learning structure intentionally make space for non-formal learning to occur? Glomas had shown me that this is possible. There must be space to - on the surface - ‘fail’ although this may in fact be a valuable lesson, just in the way being fired or rejected from a job or musical scenario teaches its own lesson. Can positive failure be measured in the same way that success is measured by constant assessment at Berklee?

There is little more satisfying as a teacher than educing a student to success, thereby validating your own teaching methods and pleasing the student in a healthy feedback loop. The temptation to seek this needs to be balanced with the reminder that much of teaching is slow, measured, repeated target practise, which, by definition, requires many small ‘failures’ to ultimately succeed. Recognising the small failures for what they are and providing encouragement around them, with an awareness of the intended larger goal is crucial.

By definition a classroom is a formal environment (even if there is no structure - that is the structure). We can, however, attempt to create an atmosphere of informality which encourages the suspension of disbelief of formality by emphasizing our status as facilitators over teachers - an altered state which I myself have experienced and benefited from whilst a Glomas student. Eva Sæther (2016, p. 46) encourages a definition of the popular term musicking to include deliberate and seemingly aimless play that I suggest could contribute to this sense of disbelief. This particular musicking can also be a useful antidote to fears of authenticity - as I found out from playing with the musical material in latter workshops (which would correspond to Campbell’s fourth step of adding extensions to the music, improvisations & new compositions).

One broad pedagogical conclusion from this workshop series is to further integrate goal-oriented teaching strategies with sufficient space within those structures to allow for small ‘failures’. I enjoyed waiting for the moment to diffuse any frustration from this approach with anecdotes & insights into sociological aspects of the music and the people who play it and using delegation among students.

Overall the guitar workshops were a success. I was encouraged by the new students that I met, almost all of whom had knew nothing of me but were drawn to the subject matter. Together we share a newfound feeling of community, having assembled anonymously with only the promise of a shared interest. Presenting music from Africa in the framework of musical theory as I anticipated that Irish guitarists would understood it (a mixture of typical guitar pedagogy and classical theory) has further encouraged me to explore the possibilities of teaching world music in a way that is accessible. I seem to have found a category of adult, semi-proficient musicians that feel unsatisfied with their musical education here in Ireland and who crave participation in music making that employs improvisation and play - in other words, they want to continue learning. I felt a sense of achievement in combining a mixed pedagogical approach drawing from my jazz studies, Glomas and Malian lessons.

My trip to Mali had a curious effect upon my own musicality - a liberation to write and sing my own songs (songs that aren't obviously or intentionally African sounding although paradoxically I have been told that there is an African-ness to some of the songs, which I don’t detect). I consciously use one riff from my first lesson with Adama in my song Diggin’ about an experience in Mali, a song I have deliberately tried to make sound less and less African. Although entirely subjective, perhaps this is the effect of a period of enculturation. After returning from Bamako a family member remarked I had come back ‘more expressive’, and this resonated with Sarah J Bartoleme’s account of a young American boy’s reaction to studying African drumming and dance stating; ‘I learned don’t be afraid to dance or sing in front of lots of people’ (Clements 2018, p. 31-32).

I feel that the intensity of my experiences helped me focus on the manifestation of goals that were previously suffocated by doubt, or a reluctance to be seen making mistakes along the way. My first-hand witness of many apparently fearless and brilliant Malian musicians fighting to be heard has represented a reference for my own self-expression, which, now takes preference to the learnt analytic - and often judgemental - approach fostered by a jazz environment like Berklee.

Any ethical concerns I had (or occasionally still have) of cultural appropriation or of essentializing Malian or African culture are offset by the examples set by these same Malian musicians who borrow freely from outside of their prescribed ethnic group or of their country, who simultaneously exist within multiple ethnic and musical sub-groupings.

From my experiences I believe that linear, binary, Western-drawn colonial borders are at the root of essentializing our perceptions of Africa and are the enemy of seeing it for the living culture it is. One step towards breaking down a perception of otherness is to approach a cultural exchange with the same fluidity that Malians & West-Africans afford their own culture. Just as in our classrooms, freedom to explore and make mistakes will lead to a greater understanding thereafter and can be encouraged.

Before visiting Mali I had long felt that charges of cultural appropriation were led by the fears of those making such accusations, but couldn’t quite verbalise this feeling. Having experienced and examining my own process of learning in one of the more distant cultures from my own like Mali - the northern Malian city of Timbuktu is often used in British English as a vague reference to an impossibly far away place e.g. from here to Timbuktu - I am more confident in my ability to express this. Seeing Africans treating their own culture fluidly and how complexities of the globalized 21st century are negotiated alongside issues of tribal and national identity resulted in me feeling less precious of cultural convention.

I mentioned the work intent a number of times, and the word has manifested throughout this work; the intent to be present and positive while musicking, the intent that leads to a cultural exchange, the focused intent of performances I witnessed while in Mali, intentions of authenticity and the intent of world music educators and pedagogic structures. There are some common traits to this intent and they are humility, self-belief, a spirit of openness, understanding that mistakes are needed for growth, mindfulness of others and the belief in a shared goal through sharing music and knowledge. I believe that ongoing attention to, and querying of my intent has helped guide me throughout this musical journey in a way that has been positive to my surroundings and logically therefore, to myself.

References

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Reflection diary & personal written & audio-recorded notes

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Van Dormael, P. (2010). Four principles to understand music. Brussels: Art Public Publishing.