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Teaching artist Sunny Jain shows students how to use their voices to create two rhythms typically played by the dhol drum in South Asian music, and how to use what they have learned to improvise their own vocal rhythm. 

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Dhol—A type of double-headed drum from the Punjab region in India and Pakistan. 
• Chaal—A widely used rhythm in Bhangra music. 
• Bhangra—A kind of upbeat, popular music from the Punjab region.
• Bollywood—The film industry based in India. 
• Dhamal—A type of rhythm played by Pakistani dhol players in Western Punjab, usually in Sufi music. 
• Sufi music—A type of trance-like devotional music in Sufism (a mystical body of religious practice in Islam).
• Bol—A syllable used in Indian music to define the rhythmic pattern, meaning “to speak” in Hindi.
• Keharwa—An eight-beat pattern used in Indian music.
• Improvisation—To make up something spontaneously, without preparation.
• Beatboxing—A form of vocal percussion that involves  mimicking drum sounds. 

Materials You Will Need:

• Nothing—just yourself!

How to Create Your Own Dhol Rhythms Using Your Voice

1. First, practice creating the chaal rhythm used in Bhangra music. First say “boom,” then say “chick.” Then, add an “a” to each of those words, so you’re saying “booma” and “chicka.” Then, you are going to beatbox, creating the chaal rhythm by repeating the phrase: “booma booma, chicka chicka.” To hear Sunny do this, scroll to around 2:50 in the video. 
2. Next, you’ll create the dhamal rhythm used by Pakistani dhol players in Sufi music. Here you’ll use the “boom” and “chick” syllables again, but we’ll add the syllable “clack.” To create this rhythm, you’ll repeat: “clack, clack, clack, b-boom b-boom chick, b-boom b-boom chick.” To hear Sunny do this, scroll to around 4:15 in the video.

3. Now, try creating keharwa, an eight-beat pattern used in Indian music. For this pattern, you’ll need to learn a number of bols, or syllables. Starting slowly, repeat the syllables “da ge na ti na ka dhi na,” and gradually increase your pace until your rhythm is very quick. To hear how Sunny does this, scroll to around 5:30 in the video. 
4. Now it’s time to try some improvisation! You can use any of the sounds you’ve learned so far, like “boom,” “chick,” or “clack,” as well as any of the bols you learned. You can also just add your own made-up sounds! Scroll to 8:20 in the video for the background rhythm that Sunny creates, and from there you can start improvising over the music. Have fun! 

In this video, Sunny shows us how to create two rhythms played by the dhol drum in South Asian music, and how to use what we’ve learned to improvise our own rhythms. If you want to go even further, think about these questions: 

• Are there any objects you can use to add some different sounds to your rhythms? What about if you drum on a box or a bucket, or play the spoons, or add a tambourine?
• How else can you use your body, besides just making the drum sounds with your mouth, to add to the rhythms you created? Can you drum on your legs, tap your feet, or snap your fingers?
• Sunny describes making drum noises with our voices as “beatboxing.” Is this something you have heard in other types of music? How, and why, do musicians use beatboxing in their music? 
• Sunny talks about how he first heard the dhol drum when he was five years old at his uncle’s wedding, and how he was mesmerized by the music. Can you remember the first time you encountered a kind of music, or other form of art, that you love?

Accessibility

Don’t forget that you can turn on “Closed Captioning” to view the YouTube video with English captions.

More about the Teaching Artist

Sunny Jain (he/him) is a composer, drummer, and dhol player. He is most known for founding the band Red Baraat and being a solo Smithsonian Folkways Recordings artist. Jain brings together musical idioms from his South Asian heritage, jazz, and progressive rock. His goal as a teaching artist is to inspire and affirm that each person in the world can create and improvise. Jain lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has delivered countless master classes around the world, including the White House AAPI event in 2012, WOMAD Festival (UK), Harvard University, New York University, and New Haven Arts and Ideas Festival. Learn more about his work at .

Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning

Eric Friedman 
Director, Digital Learning

Kenny Neal 
Manager, Digital Education Resources

Tiffany A. Bryant 
Manager, Operations and Audience Engagement

JoDee Scissors 
Content Specialist, Digital Learning

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