Otherwise, your correspondent is surrounded by clean-cut 20- and 30-somethings banging modified djembe drums.

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Percussion instruments range from the balafon (marimba) to the calabash, but the celebrity drum is the djembe.

ECONOMIST: Percussion instruments

To learn how to play the djembe, Sleiman spent several weeks taking daily lessons from a professional musician from Ghana.

NPR: Learning to Drum �� and Live �� in 'The Visitor'

One of Guinea's top djembe masters, Mamady Keita, runs training centres in Europe and America as well as in west Africa.

ECONOMIST: Percussion instruments

Tarek teaches Walter to play the djembe, a West African drum, and his pedagogical style involves a lot more encouragement than the piano teacher offered.

NPR: Learning to Drum �� and Live �� in 'The Visitor'

"It's his journey from this sort of heady instrument that he can't seem to get the hang of to this West African drum, the djembe, " McCarthy says.

NPR: Learning to Drum �� and Live �� in 'The Visitor'