You already teach. This is about how well.
The Keeper's Code is a certification program for working instructors of West African drumming — people who are already in front of students and know that what they were given was not enough.
A workshop here. A festival there. A recording, a video, a teacher who was generous but rushed. They can play the patterns. Many play them well. What they were never given is the thing underneath — the ceremony the rhythm belongs to, the people it belongs to, the reason it exists at all. That gap is not their fault. But it is a problem, and it compounds. An instructor who does not know what a rhythm is for cannot teach what it is for. Two generations of that, and a tradition becomes a style. Mamady Keïta built the first formal qualification system Manding music ever had, and he tested every candidate himself — not only on the djembe and dunun, but on culture, ceremony, and repertoire. He did that because he understood what happens when transmission goes unchecked. The Keeper's Code is built to that standard.
You know where you come from. You name your teachers. You know whose music you are transmitting and what that music is made of.
You play with accuracy, authority, and real musicality. You understand the instruments — including how they are built.
You know the ceremonies behind the rhythms, the people behind the ceremonies, and the history behind the people.
You use the drum to serve, build, and sustain the communities around you — not to perform for them.
Who you are in this work and why it matters; lineage, self-assessment, performer vs. teaching artist vs. cultural steward.
The Mande world, griot tradition, the masters, and D.C.'s history with this music, taught as living context.
Djembe, dunun, sangban, kenkeni: voice, anatomy, cultural identity, construction; includes Mahiri building a drum start to finish.
Ensemble theory and polyrhythm as social architecture; teaching students to hear the conversation, not just execute a part.
Core traditional repertoire, each rhythm with its people, region, ceremony, and common teaching errors.
Pedagogy age four through adult; hand-to-hand method, call and response, holding a high standard with warmth.
Building youth programs, school residencies, college partnerships that last; the drum as infrastructure, not enrichment.
Insider/outsider question, appropriation and transmission, regional specificity, running a practice without selling the sacred.
Structure, pricing, grant writing, digital presence, succession; building something that outlasts you.
Certification, teaching practicum, the Keeper's Oath; not the end of formation, the beginning of accountability.
Format — Fully digital: video lessons, rhythm notation, cultural reference materials, teaching toolkits
Pacing — Self-paced
Live sessions — Monthly live sessions with Mahiri — questions, rhythm review, practicum feedback, community
Annual gathering — Once a year, in person — masterclasses, performance, ceremony
Field residency — Optional travel with Mahiri to West Africa — the deepest formation available
Certification — Awarded after all ten modules, a reviewed teaching practicum, and a demonstration of cultural knowledge
“I carry this tradition by name and by lineage. I will name my teachers in every space I enter. I will teach the culture and not only the technique. I will build community — not audience. And when I am gone, the chain will not break because of me.”
— from the Keeper's Oath
$1,997 at launch
The full certification program is $1,997 at launch. That includes all ten modules, the monthly live sessions, and the teaching practicum review. Payment plans are available. The annual gathering and the field residency are priced separately.
A note on the price. This program costs less than a single graduate course and carries knowledge that no graduate course in this country can offer, because the knowledge did not come from a university. It came from Balandugu, from Sangbaralla, from a griot family a hundred and forty-nine generations deep, and from thirty years of a man's life spent carrying it. We price it to be reachable. We do not price it to be cheap.
The Master's Circuit is a five-day advanced residency for intermediate and advanced drummers — four evenings of instruction and a Sunday intensive, closing with a meal together. It is the shortest path to understanding what this tradition asks of a teacher, and it is where most Keepers begin.
$500 per participant. Minimum twelve drummers per city.
Tell us where you teach, who taught you, and what you are trying to build — include your city, where you currently teach, who taught you, and what you want to build in the message below. Mahiri reviews every application himself.