Remembering Your Ancestral Fire: A Bi-racial Man’s Unlikely Journey of Self-Discovery, Heeding the Call of the Djembe

This book is not for musicians or African drumming enthusiasts - it is for all humans! It is a collage of my experiences learning, playing, and teaching djembe, a goblet-shaped West African drum. It is not chronological, but it is thematic, focusing on various aspects of my life, including my trips to Guinea in West Africa and other places around the world to learn and share djembe, “Africanesque” folktales I have written, and hopefully, a few kernels of wisdom about music and life that will help you on your own journey. Journal entries and folktales are sprinkled throughout and are not always related to the chapter itself but add additional insight into my experiences. My interest in djembe—a West African drum—is also an interest in people, culture, communication, and the meaning of life. That may sound overly philosophical, but I hope you’ll see what I mean by the time you finish reading this book.

Here are a few facts about me that may be helpful to know before we continue. My full name is Michael Taylor, but I prefer to be called “Taylor.” I am biracial and adopted, with a black father and white mother, which means much of my early life was spent trying to understand why I didn’t fit in. I think djembe found me to bring me home to part of my ethnic lineage as well as to my purpose in this lifetime. Learning djembe, for me, has been a search for identity, awareness, and connection. Perhaps you are attracted to music, art, certain foods, literature, or something else for similar reasons. I hope this book contains universal truths that will resonate with your own experiences. If nothing else, playing djembe all over the world has taught me that while we all have unique gifts and different experiences, we have far more in common. Some of us may march to the beat of a different drum, but we all have something beautiful and unique to add to the rhythm.

Enjoy and appreciate your journey! Now read about mine…