John F. Carrington (born 1914) was an English missionary who spent large part of his life in the Belgian Congo. He became fluent in the Kele language and in the related drum language, and wrote a book on the subject.
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John Carrington arrived in Africa in 1938.[1] He was involved in teaching throughout his missionary career in Yakusu, a major school center run by the Baptist Missionary Society, where he worked between 1938 and 1950.[2] He was struck by the fact that although there were no telephones, everyone know exactly when he would arrive at a village.[1] He found that the local Kele people were communicating via drums. Each village had an expert drummer and everyone could understand drum language, which echoes the rhythms of the spoken Kele language. Carrington published The Talking Drums of Africa in 1949. By that time, the Kele drum language was falling out of use. Today, it has become extinct.[3]
Carrington moved to Yalemba in 1951, where he found two drum languages corresponding to the Heso language of the Basoko people and the Topoke language of the Baonga villagers on the other side of the Congo.[4] However, he found that out of 200 boys at the school only 20 could drum. Carrington said "The boys now say, 'We want to read and write,' and laugh at the drum".[5]