Fall/Winter session begins September 8, 2026
Classes are in session now.
Register Now!Anke djé, anke bé.
Everyone gather together in peace.
That sentence is where the djembe gets its name. It is also a job description. In the villages of Guinea and Mali, this drum called people to ceremony, marked their transitions, settled their disputes, buried their dead, and welcomed their children. It was not enrichment. It was infrastructure.
We teach it that way.
Weekly instruction in drum and dance for ages three through adult, at our studio in Mount Rainier. Beginners are welcome. Nobody is rushed.
Our annual flagship concert — drummers and dancers of every age on one stage, one night a year. Families come dressed in their best.
Certification for working instructors who want to teach this tradition with the depth it requires. Not a drumming course. A formation.
Immersive travel for young people — Ghana, the coast, the castles, the living tradition. A rite of passage, structured as one.
Farafina Kan was founded in 2004 by Mahiri Fadjimba Keita, a certified professor of Tam Tam Mandingue International and a student of three of the most consequential figures in this tradition: Mamady Keïta, who called him son; Famoudou Konaté, one of a small number of initiated masters of the Malinké drum; and Djimo Kouyate, the Senegalese griot who anchored Washington's African arts community for two decades.
We name them every time. Not out of modesty — out of accuracy. What we teach is not ours. We are carrying it.
Brooklyn Academy of Music · DanceAfrica (2012, 2022)
DC Jazz Festival
University of the District of Columbia · Birthright
Back2Africa Festival, Ghana
Public schools, charter schools, and universities across the D.C. region
I signed him up not knowing what to expect — would it be too much stimulation? Too much structure? Three months later he carries himself different. He listens. He takes it serious. And he loves it. I didn't know culture could do that for a child.
— Parent of an 11-year-old student
My daughter is autistic, and a room full of people used to be too much for her. Nobody rushed her. They let her find her own way into the circle. Now I hear her voice in it.
— Parent of a 9-year-old student
I've been to plenty of African drum classes. This is the first one that brought it home. My children don't just play the rhythms, they know what the rhythms are for and where they stand in them.
— Parent of two students
I walked in at forty-two having never touched a drum in my life. Nobody looked at me sideways. By the third class I had my hands on a djembe and a whole room pulling for me.
— Adult student, Wednesday class
I came for the workout, and my body did change. My arms, my back, my wind, all of it. But I stayed for what it does for my spirit. No gym ever grounded me like this.
— Adult student
You can feel the lineage in the room. What he teaches, he was given, and he is careful with it. That care is why I bring my whole family here.
— Parent and adult student
Our home is the studio in Mount Rainier, Maryland — where children who started at four are now teaching, and where the next company is already in the room.
3802 34th Street, Mount Rainier, MD 20712
Baba M · 301-252-9643
