Vanessa Morgan loves drumming more than anyone I know.  She is passionate about sharing the history, methods and healing powers of African drumming. In line with this, she is extremely knowledgeable about the traditional rhythms and highly adept in teaching them. As a consummate professional, she ensures that her ensemble performs expertly for events.
As a former student and ensemble member,  I highly recommend her as a teacher and a performer. 
— Malia Durbano

What we've done:

Snowdown
Agape Durango
Turtle Lake Refuge
Keys to Success Conference
Sacred Arts Festival St Marks Church
First United Methodist Church
Unitarian Universalist Church
Durango Double
Fall Blaze
River Run for Orphans
P4 Consulting
Durango Connect
Durango Arts Center
The High Path Firewalk
Ananda Gaia
4 Corners Primitive Skills Gathering
Stillwater Foundation
Animas River Days
Living Yoga Project
Dia De Los Muertos Yoga Durango
Community Connections Festival of Trees

“Vanessa joined us for a segment of the Professional Development Program for Managers here in La Plata County. Our topic for that session was Leading Thriving Teams. Vanessa did an excellent job of teaching us novices the basics of drumming, then taking us through increasingly complex polyrhythms —way more complex than we initially thought we could do! She also wove the themes of leading, following, listening to the rhythm of others and finding the groove as a team into the drumming—exactly what we were learning and practicing in the management development course. I strongly recommend Vanessa and Durango Drums as part of a larger learning program, or just as a team building exercise within your corporate group. She is dynamic and patient, encouraging and sure. The drumming experience is intense—it is not often in our modern lives that we just concentrate on one thing for an hour. Good for the brain and good for the soul, and really fun!"

—Ellen Babers
    Managing Partner, P4 Consulting

We are dedicated to sharing the joy, healing and connection that comes from learning and playing the traditional rhythms of West Africa through classes, workshops, performance, trance dance, and ceremony.

Vanessa Morgan began playing the djembe and dununs in 1995. A student of Mamady
Keita (one of the worlds most accomplished true Masters) since 2004, she has attended
several camps and classes with him since that time. She has also studied with Famadou Konate -- universally respected as one of the world’s premiere djembe Drum Masters.

In 2011 she attended the Drum Instructor Training with Bill Scheidt of Tam Tam Mandingue Winston Salem to hone her teaching skills as well as Drum Circle Facilitation with Jim Donovan.
Vanessa founded Durango Drums in February 2011 to share her passion, experience and love for the traditional polyrhythms of West Africa. Since meeting Herman Kathan in 2013 her current focus is on trance rhythms, attending camps and workshops with him in Germany, Italy and the US.

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Vanessa’s teaching is joyful, articulate, and suffused with both the technical and deeper aspects of drumming in community.  I never leave a session without feeling connected to both myself and the others present.
—Judy Austin