Olivier Tarpaga – Fēfē: Percussion Quartet in Four Parts

Fēfē was composed orally and taught to Sō Percussion by rote. Olivier and I thought it would be valuable to make a score to record the ideas in the piece, but this score should be thought of as a resource and a reference for putting together a memorized performance. As such, no parts are included. The notes in the score are just a starting place for feeling and understanding the quality of the rhythms, and there are deliberately few expressive indications. The music should always sing, always move, with a warmth and joy in its interpretation.

In most of the piece, the two-staff notation indicates high and low sounds that occur on multiple instruments throughout West African music including the djembe and the dun dun. In movement I, a wooden table amplified by contact microphones transfers ideas from Olivier’s djembe into contemporary percussion. The low sound is played by the heel of the hand on the table, the high sound by knocking with the knuckles. It might help the performer to imagine a small drum on the table, playing in the center with the heel of the hand for the bass note and closer to their body for the knocking high note.

In other places throughout the rest of the piece, the performers have wide lattitude to choose instruments. In general, the low sound is some kind of drum, while the high sound might resemble a rim or hi-hat. For movement II, Sō Percussion gathers around a single bass drum, playing the head and the rim. For movement III, we use drumset toms and wooden slats, sometimes substituting the rim of the drums for the slats. At the end of movement IV, we use unique “chordstick” instruments that were built for us, but drums could work as well.

Movement II is meant to be performed with a trumpet soloist. The score is more of a lead sheet, with the trumpeter following part three for cues and material. In Sō, Josh Quillen plays a low chordstick and a synth for part three. We also distribute playing the pitches in the score around the ensemble, sometimes with gongs and crotales.

For Movement IV, all four players play on one five-octave marimba, but the parts are split in the score for ease of reading.

A calabash is half of a dried gourd that is used extensively in Burkina Faso. In this piece, player 1 plays it with the heel of the hand for a low sound, and with chopsticks for the high sound. The water calabash is a calabash played in a bucket of water. Player 4 performs glissandi by pulling the calabash out the water as they play.

Many rhythms and ideas in this piece cannot be notated accurately from Olivier’s feel, particularly the metal guiro in movement III. In general, play loosely and with a melodic, groovy sensibility. Please refer to a video or reach out to us if you have any questions about it. Enjoy!

– Adam Sliwinski