Ewe 12/8 — the drum-ensemble skeleton behind agbekor, gahu and much Ghanaian/Togolese dance music. The gankogui bell plays the seven-stroke bell-12-8 key pattern (strokes 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 of twelve pulses); everything else is placed against it.
How it sits: the clave layer is the bell, and the piano doubles it on a single note so you can hear it from the keyboard. The drums layer carries the support: axatse rattle on every pulse (shaker), kagan (high conga) on the two off-pulses after each beat, kidi (low tom) on the second pulse of each beat, and the low sogo (kick) on beats 1 and 3. Tempo is the quarter (two pulses); 120 means a dotted-quarter beat of 80.
Listen for the bell's long–long–short shape and how beat 1 is ambiguous: the pattern works counted in four, in three, or from the bell's lone sixth stroke.
Practice: clap the bell while stepping four beats; then try stepping three.