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Am I crazy or what? I've been thinking ever since August, when I went to a weekend drum & dance workshop where I got to experience playing (West African) syncopated bell and drum patterns with two sticks.

I just know there must be some scat / jive language that vocalizes some basic percussion parts like:

Bell Part: "Da-em, Da-em, Da-em-em".

Shakere:
"Shaka-boom, shaka-boom, shaka-boom-boom"

Clave: "Bah-bah-bah, dun-dun"

I think 3 people could really get wailing on this kind of thing - but I ain't had the circumstance to try it with friends yet.

Do you know of any information on building up some multi-part vocal rhythms? I don't how or where to find them.

Best Regards,
Eric

I have come across phonetic transcriptions for various rhythms in almost every educational book on percussion, but to my knowledge there does not exist a fixed, registered pattern. Authors freely choose syllables for rhythical structures (gung--ba-da-ba etc.),
and you may therefore find your own...

Besides, finding rhythm syllables or even whole words (e.g. 3-2 Clave: "Pa-na-ma Pa-na-ma Cuba") is really one of the best ways to memorise rhythms. Working with cildren at school myself, especially the young ones are rapidly capable of singing and then playing even complicated syncopes, triads, etc. - even before they know how it looks like in written form (scores).
As far as I know, in India, the drummers of the master drummer schools teach the same way their incredibly complex rhythms. And every jazz musician will hum the tunes to you in scat-like syllables...

A-loop-ba-be-loo-bap.. hang on, have fun!

hi limberic.
mike's right there are no common syllables for congas ( that i know of anyway ) but you can make up ones that fit best. though there are syllables for the darbuka, (though not everyone uses them) and these can be propably modified to the conga.
but like mike said the indian percussions have specified syllables for each strike, for example,

Dha/ tire/ kite/ taka/

this is a pretty simple tabla rhythm , since it is 4/4 time
( well kind of ),
but if you want to use syllables for practise you should just make them up for each srike, or incorporate and modify from an other instrument (eg. the darbuka ) .
I personally use syllables since it really makes thinking about the rythm easier, i use my own syllables which are kind of what the darbuka uses but somewhat modified, and it helps because used to it, cause i play the tabla.

In my opinion every rhythmic type of drum group in the world has it's own tonal language . In guaguanco, you can say Un-pa-kin-kin-kun. The say if you can Say it you can Play it......If you can find Los Papines on Cd they are famous for vocalizing afro-cuban rhythms,and there are others.....talking rhythms can be fun and singing parts too..... Peace and Practice ....JC JOHNNY CONGA......

I just remembered the group from Cuba "Grupo Vocal Sampling" is the best Accapella group to come out of Cuba,they can sing all the percussion instrument parts for Rumba etc......JC JOHNNY CONGA...