Keur Djembe (House of Drums in Wolof) is the creation of Ibrahima Diokhane. Ibrahima immigrated to the United States in the early 1980's from Dakar, Senegal. He left his family and business behind to pursue "the American dream." He soon found out the pursuit of the American dream takes alot of hard work and time.
He worked many jobs over the years; bicycle messenger, bakery chef, NYC taxi cab driver, pressman at a printing factory, Guici watch seller out of his briefcase in midtown Manhattan. In the late 80's Ibrahima got a vending license enabling him to legally sell on the streets of NYC. He began selling the usual; handbags, hats, belts, clothing, etc. all over the city. But he always had a djembe with him which he played. Time and time again, people would ask to buy that drum or they wanted him to fix their own broken one. Ibrahima slowly began repairing drums for people in the bathroom of his apartment and displaying them in the windows.
Ibrahima then began to make djembes a permanent part of his table while vending other merchandise. Slowly, the djembes took over the table and Ibrahima was solely selling and repairing djembes by 1995.
Ibrahima was never formally "trained" to make djembes but feels he was given a gift and can make any drum made with skin sing. As a child in Africa, he made drums out of old fruit cans and rabbit skins and sold them to the tourists in the city.
Ibrahima continued to sell his djembes on the street and was aptly known as the "drum man" on 7th Avenue and Carroll Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn where you could find him most days selling his drums in front of Key Food. In 1998, he was able to rent the empty store front below his apartment and Keur Djembe was created. Now there are at least one hundred djembes in the store as well as other African instruments, statues, masks, jewelry. We have chldren's and adult djembe classes every week. Of course, Ibrahima is still repairing drums, any kind of drum with a skin he can fix.
If you have the opportunity you must check out this store.
