Travels with Rambax | MIT Technology Review

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

Touré, a Senegalese master drummer and an MIT lecturer in world music, cofounded Rambax in 2001 with Patricia Tang, an associate professor and ethnomusicologist who specializes in West African music. It began as an extracurricular group to teach students and other members of the MIT community the art of sabar, a vibrant West African drumming and dance tradition. Today, Rambax is a credit-bearing class (21M.460) enrolling as many as 50 students a semester, and its ensemble’s performances draw audiences from MIT and the wider Boston community.  

During Independent Activities Period (IAP), 16 members of the ensemble joined Touré and Tang on a two-week study tour in Senegal, the birthplace of the music that inspires Rambax. In addition to performing, the students attended drumming classes and dance workshops taught by expert Senegalese drummers, and they experienced sabar drumming within its traditional and cultural context in Dakar and Kaolack.

A sabar celebration, known as a tanibeer when held at night, is a lavish display of dance music, a great neighborhood carnival.

“Rambax is unique,” says Touré, whose family of prominent griot percussionists had him drumming from the age of four. Traveling to Senegal allowed the students to experience the cultural significance of the music—and Touré says their Senegalese audiences were really impressed with their playing.

COURTESY OF RAMBAX

A sabar celebration, also known as a tanibeer when held at night, is a lavish display of dance music: a great neighborhood carnival, jammed with lights, blaring speakers, griots, costumed dancers, drums and drums and ever more drums, and—of course—dancing.

On the night of the Rambax tanibeer in January, the sky is clear and chilly breezes waft across the field, where throngs of people, some dressed in colorful Senegalese traditional garb, gather under fluorescent lights perched on lampposts, chatting and gesticulating while waiting to watch the performance.

As the MIT students walk in, wearing their bright yellow, green, and red knee-length dashikis, the crowd erupts into applause. 

Standing in front of his hometown audience, long dark dreadlocks spilling to his shoulders, Touré takes a microphone and introduces the ensemble in his native Wolof. He explains that his students are lovers of African music and, under his tutelage at MIT, have been learning the art of sabar. He pauses for a moment and leans in close to start conducting. 

Then Rambax begins to play.

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