Educational Media Reviews Online

Rasaki's Drums: Rhythms & Drums of Nigeria's Yorubá is a part of the documentary series Speaking of Rhythm. The episode explores various West African percussion instruments through the perspective of drummer Rasaki Aladokun. In collaboration with director and producer Eve Ma, Rasaki introduces and plays each instrument while providing cultural background and personal anecdotes throughout. His enthusiasm for performance helps to provide insight to a genre of music that has often been overlooked in Western music education.

The content of Rasaki’s Drums would be of interest to those studying music, including music education, music performance, and ethnomusicology. Due to its straightforward dialogue and short runtime, the film could also be easily incorporated into a music or social studies curriculum in the K-12 setting. However, the film’s structure and production can at times distract from the quality of the content. Because the interview is loosely structured, it is common for the conversation to stray from the main points of discussion. The video editing of the film, which alternates between the interview and performance demonstrations, does not help to differentiate between a conversational tangent and the beginning of a new discussion point. There were also occasional issues with audio mixing; it can be difficult to hear segments of dialogue due to the volume of the background music.

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