IN Africa drums are not only used for music, they form parts of our culture and history as a people from ancient times. I grew up in a small snake-like village that nestle between some huge weather washed rocks and a valley, and I can recall several drums of different shapes that were passed from one generation to the other. I can recall the drum beats during rites of passage, during my own initiation to boyhood and during the New Yam Festival. Each feast invokes its own kind of drums. The Okele dance, to which I am now a patron in my quarter, has its special drums and beating pattern. The Hunter’s Group, The Ekho Dance has its special drums, the New Yam Festival, the boyhood rites, the Oborimi Festival…all have their specific drums. Although the rhythmic echoe of each drum is different, there is always some sort of consistency in the beats.
In Okpe, my ancestral home where my placenta was buried, drums are used to communicate between our ancestors and their descendants. They form part of our rituals. Like the Okele Dance, drums are used to usher the dead away towards their resting places in the hereafter. Drums are also used to make the living dead(those that have not become ancestors yet because there are people alive who still can recall their faces and memories) The living-dead skirts the village in guard, they shuffle their feet to the symphony of the drums handled by sinewy hands, farm hands, strong hands, blister-filled palms…
Again, drums are used in periods of celebration such as childbirth. The child is told we are happy you came to join us, we are happy there is a new cry in the house, we are happy the owl did not cry at night on the rooftop… A Dane gun of single barrel is first cracked, then the lively drumming follows. We are all happy – you can see the gay jingling of the celebratory women.
Drums are also played during age group festivals or dance groups celebrations. They give life to their songs and dances, which in turn helps in building the community as a unit, and for strengthening social and family relationships.
