I've just started drumming lessons with a new teacher. I spent a lot of time with Francis, the drumming instructor I've mentioned before who lives in Menkassim. He's an accomplished drummer, a cool guy, and he has shown me a lot of interesting things from Ghanaian culture, but he is just not a very good teacher. I actually just rented him a room for two years, at an expense of $60 to my mother. But I'm sure if you knew him, mom, you'd be glad I donated him your money. I'm going out to see his new digs on Friday, I will write how they are.
My new drumming teacher is named Sam. He's a big guy with small dreadlocks that he keeps buried under a knit hat. I ask him if it makes him hot to always be wearing that hat, but he won't listen to my words of wisdom. When we have a lesson, the sweat really pours off him. He drums hard!
He also drums amazingly. He's twenty two or twenty four now, and was part of a group that played in Amsterdam and a couple other european cities in 2001 and 2003, but thats all over now that the lead drummer in the group is dead. So he makes his money giving lessons to white people, and seems to be highly dependent upon a mysterious American known only as Ryan. Ryan's back in the states, now, but he still manages to wiggle his way in to a lot of conversations.
Lessons with Sam are good. There is a narrow alley behind a row of drum and curio shops, where all the Rastas hang out when they're not working in the shop. Well, we take up position behind Royalhouse shop number 59, me sitting on an upturned drum and him on a plastic carton of cooking oil, and bang out rhythms. We make a lot of noise, and people from the street are always coming to peer at us through the holes in the wall in to our alleyway. I'm getting good!