Talking drum

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For the progressive rock song, see The Talking Drum.

A talking drum

Yamar Thiam of the Finnish group Galaxy performing at the Imatra Big band Festival at Imatra, July 2005

The talking drum is a West African drum whose pitch can be regulated to the extent that it is said the drum "talks". The player puts the drum under one shoulder and beats the instrument with a stick. A talking drum player raises or lowers the pitch by squeezing or releasing the drum's strings with the upper arm. This can produce highly informative sounds to convey complicated messages. The ability to change the drum's pitch is analogous to the language tonality of some African languages.

1 History
2 Drum names
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

Talking drums are hour-glass shaped with two heads (made from either goat, lizard (iguana), or fish skin) tuned by straps that connect the heads with each other. They are some of the oldest instruments used by west African griots and their history can be traced back to ancient Ghana Empire. The Hausa people (and by influence, the Yoruba people of south western Nigeria and Benin and the Dagomba of northern Ghana) have developed a highly sophisticated genre of griot music centering on the talking drum.

In the 20th century the talking drum became a part of popular music in West Africa. It is used in playing Mbalax music of Senegal and in Fuji and Jùjú music of Nigeria (where it known as a dùndún, not to be confused with the dundun bass drum of the Mandé peoples.)

[edit] Drum names

In some ethnic groups, each individual was given a drum name. Examples from among the Bulu of Cameroon are "Even if you dress up finely, love is the only thing" or "The giant wood rat has no child, the house rat has no child". Talking drum players sent messages by drumming the recipient's name, followed by the sender's name and the message.^[1]