This past year I had the pleasure of attending the incredible Hot Raqs festival in California for the first time!
Let’s dance to the beat of our own drum with this fun and funky acapella finger cymbal riff!
This pattern is built mostly on a “5” pattern – five 16th note strokes of the cymbals in a row. We’ll be doing 4 of them and I think you’ll find that the feel of the rhythm is pretty groovy and unique.
The running 5s are counted:
1e&a2 &a3e& 4e&a1 &a2e&
And then we’ll add three emphatic clacks at the end!
3 & 4
In this video I will take you through the pattern step-by-step with special attention given to the counts so you can feel the beat in your body. We will play with two different cymbal and sounds and then DANCE to the beat of our own drum with a few simple and fun belly dance movements to complete the combination!
Are you ready? Grab your finger cymbals and let’s dive in!
In this video I am playing some of my favorite finger cymbals – The Saroyan Afghani’s in Silver. Get your very own pair here .
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Do you enjoy this kind of finger cymbal challenge? Then check out my signature membership “The Belly Dance Journey”, where you can dive deep with me every month into the wonderful world of zills with intermediate and advanced finger cymbal sounds, patterns, riffs and combinations.
The membership opens just twice a year, so get on the waitlist now so you are the first to know when it opens again!
WHAT!?!? Someone is selling FAKE Saroyan Finger Cymbals?
Sad but true.
I just learned from the good people at Saroyan Mastercrafts that someone is selling reproductions of their cymbals on the internet.
To the untrained eye the look almost the same. (But sound nothing like the real thing!)
Can you spot the fake?
While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, friends don’t let friends play bad zills.
Don’t get duped into paying good money for an inferior set of finger cymbals. Check out this video to learn how you can spot the counterfeits.
To be sure you are buying authentic Saroyan finger cymbals, made by Vince and Virginia and their family in their small shop in Riverside, California check their website for approved vendors.
You may not know this about me, but I am a huge fan of Renaissance Festivals!
I have been attending festivals my whole life starting as a teenager at the Bristol Renaissance Festival in Wisconsin. I’ve been started performing at the Texas renaissance festival in 2001 and after that went on to perform at several other festivals including the Michigan Renaissance Festival and the Arizona Faire.
My experiences have been varied! In fact… The first year that I worked at the Arizona Faire I worked in a jewelry booth during the day and ran down the lane to dance as a guest with another troupe three times a day during my break. (I also lived on the weekends in a tiny 6′ x 6′ room at the top of the ladder immediately above the shop… But that is a story for another time!)
I’ve had the honor of performing with the incredible Domba troupe out of Arizona as well as the Michigan based Nommobugunte West African Dance Ensemble.
Nowadays all of my renaissance festival experiences are through the incredible early music ensemble Istanpitta. I have been performing with them now for 22 years and it has been such a beautiful learning experience! I started as a fill-in dancer standing in the dirt just to the side of the stage. Now, years later I have the opportunity to sing, play the flute and dance with this magical ensemble every single year.
Learn more about them at Istanpitta.com.
This video comes from an incredibly rainy weekend at the Sherwood Forest Fair in Texas. It’s a combination of two songs “Gaudete” and “Dunje” – two of my favorites from our repertoire.
A special thanks to my daughter for taking the video… and joining in on the singing near the end! 🙂
Enjoy!
The drum solo is one of belly dance’s most exciting and sought after moments!
The energy of the rhythm and the dancer’s ability to make it look as though the drum accents are literally coming out of her body are part of what make this element of belly dance so very magical.
You don’t need a bunch of new movements to be able to begin to execute a finely tuned drum solo, but you do need to know how to do them in a way that will best accentuate your music!
In this video I will take you through some essential ideas to help you create the crisp, sharp and powerful movements most often seen in the belly dance drum solo. We’ll work though a few specific movements and then you can use this new knowledge and apply it to other moves in your vocabulary to make them drum solo accent ready!
Special thanks to the fabulous Lauren Checchio for the use of her music. Get her amazing album here: https://laurenchecchio.bandcamp.com/releases