EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 19 - Inkiranya

Genre of the Day - Inkiranya

Album of the Day - Les Maitres-Tambours du Burundi by Les Maîtres-Tambours du Burundi (1982)

I talk often about how much my understanding of genre has shifted based on how important drums are to the concept. A single drum pattern can define a genre; percussion matters more than melody in perhaps the majority of genres. Sometimes, a drum pattern cuts through so sharply that it inspires the concept of sampling before sampling is even a thing. 

That’s right: inkiranya has the honor of producing the song that was first sampled, stamping its place in music history even though it deserves more recognition. Joni Mitchell, ever ahead of her contemporaries who would come around and incorporate so-called “world music” at the time into their own music, liked the rhythm so much she did some studio wizardry and underlaid the drumming into her song “The Jungle Line” off of 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns. I love Joni’s songwriting, but I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in the song by reading various interpretations online. The central point seems to be French naïve painter Henri Rousseau: my best guess is that the song is a comment on her own nature as a self-taught singer and songwriter interested in a vast range of styles critics would be inclined to put down, just like Rousseau’s self-taught exoticism? Her own comments on it are questionable at best. Hejira has better concepts; sorry not sorry. 

Nonetheless, inkiranya still has the power to draw one in as Mitchell was five decades ago. Hailing from Burundi, the genre features a whole legion of drummers with about thirty. Some hold down the base rhythm with a softer drum. Others come forth with the centerpiece of the music, a resonant pounding more powerful drum impossible to ignore. In the background, one understands the communal nature of the act of musical creation, with declarative singing opening the tracks leading to at times unified chanting and at other times gleeful, less coordinated chorusing.

Drums infuse life across Burundi’s range of traditions, accompanying births, funerals, and coronations. It’s easy to grasp the importance of this music when seeing how much it represents in Burundi’s musical culture: the force of these drums aim to mimic the power of fertility, regeneration, and royalty. It’s easy to feel that embodiment in the coordination and collective expression of the inkiranya on this album; plus, there can be perhaps no stronger claim to a genre’s potency than it inspiring the act of sampling.