Drum-Bits
TALKING DRUMS AND INSTANT MESSAGING
In Africa, drums are instruments of communication used on secular and sacred occasions. The ‘voice’ of the drum is always associated with important stages in life, divinations, funerals and ceremonies to honor the ancestors. The sound of the drum can often be heard across an area of five miles. Up to this day, drums are used to send messages between villages and are as efficient as a telephone. Within a community, drummers share, understand and translate rhythms and patterns of drum beats. It is almost like the Morse code. Drums can also be used for storytelling. In Africa, in call-and-response drumming and singing, a leader plays or sings a phrase or line of music, known as a call. The rest of the group, the chorus, answers back by playing or singing another phrase or line of music. This pattern is repeated over and over again throughout the song. Call-and-response was first brought to the Americas through the slave trade. Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll, and Hip-hop have all been influenced by call-and-response.
Martinique
22 May 1848: In the Duchamp plantation, a slave named Romain was incarcerated following a complaint by the mayor of Saint Pierre that he was beating the drum while other slaves were preparing cassava. Slaves in the workshop found the punishment too harsh. They called for the support of the inhabitants of Saint Pierre and demonstrated in front of the prison, demanding that Romain be released. Police were sent to disperse the crowd by force. The police chief, a mulatto, decided to release Romain. But the mayor, who was in favor of slavery, disapproved and summoned him to the municipal council. Following this summon, slaves rallied, gathering around the city hall, determined to protect the police chief. Concerned by the turn of events, the municipal council voted in favor of the abolition of slavery. For a day and a night, slaves took full control of the city of Saint-Pierre. The revolt spread to the south of the island and the Atlantic coast. On 23 May 1848, faced with the mass uprising of slaves, Governor Claude Rostoland decreed the abolition of slavery in Martinique.
TAMBOURINES
The pitch of these hour-glass shaped drums can be regulated to the extent that it is said the drum "talks" and can be used for drum communication. These instruments are made from either goat, lizard (iguana), or fish skin and tuned by straps that connect the heads with each other. The player puts the drum under one shoulder and beats the instrument with a specialized beater. The pitch is raised or lowered 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. In far North Cameroon, these drums are called Kalangou (in the Hausa language spoken in Northern Cameroon).
Tambourines are some of the oldest instruments used by West African poets, praise singers and storytellers who perpetuate oral tradition and who are also called griots or djelis. 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. Many variants of the talking drum exist, with essentially the same construction mentioned above. Interestingly, this construction is limited to within the contemporary borders of West Africa, with exceptions to this rule being northern Cameroon and western Chad; areas which have shared populations belonging to groups predominant in their bordering West African countries, such as the Kanuri, Djerma, Fulani and Hausa.
SAVANNAH AND SAHEL
500 BC: The explorer Hanno from Carthage in North Africa (Tunisia) is the first foreigner who reports seeing Mount Cameroon. In the following centuries a trade of slaves and goods develops from northern Cameroon across Sahara to North Africa.
1472: Portuguese from an expedition lead by Fernando Po are the first Europeans to reach the coast of Cameroon. They reach Douala and then sail up the Wouri River. They name it "Rio dos Camarões - the Prawn River -by that giving the name to the country. With the arrival of Europeans the focus of slave trade shifts to the Coastal areas. Deals are made with traders from England, Holland, France, Germany and Portugal. Mostly slaves and ivory are exported from Cameroon. The Europeans brings cloth and metal-products.
1520: A few Portuguese settlers start plantations and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The constant fight for territory produces refugees vulnerable for the slave traders. Slaves are caught in savannah and Sahel areas and brought to the coast to be shipped to the Americas. Some are encouraged t carry with them drums of these types –ganga, dimeu and miziri- so that they can beat them throughout the journey. In some slave areas in the Americas, slaves were forbidden to play drums from the moment they arrived.
ROYAL DRUMS
The music of Africa is as vast and varied as the continent's many regions, nations and ethnic groups. Although there is no distinctly pan-African music, there are common forms of musical expression, especially within regions.
Some musical genres of northern and northeastern Africa, and the Islands off East Africa, share both traditional African and Middle Eastern features.
The music and dance forms of the African Diaspora, including many Caribbean and Latin American music genres like rumba and salsa, as well as African American music, were founded to varying degrees on musical traditions from Africa, taken there by African slaves. These royal drums are ancestors to the “gwo ka” drums found in Guadeloupe, in the French Caribbean.
LONG DRUMS
These drums provide a rich nexus of interplay between the arts of Africa. These instruments set the beat for dancing and dramatic display and they are carriers of local symbolism. Well carved, they come mainly from the Grasslands of Cameroon, a region with mountainous terrain and broad savannas. Grassland’s art serves to indicate social status and rank with the most prestigious imagery and material reserved for the king (Fon) and other nobility at court. Selected artists and artisans working close by the palace serve the royal court working in materials and symbols reserved exclusively for the aristocracy. The drumhead made from animal skin is held in place by wooden pegs around which ropes are tied to secure the skin in place.
EKALI DRUMS
Drumming powerful and inspirational rhythms have provided the vibrant music for all community celebrations and events. Drums played by African slaves have continued to carry this tradition in the Americas. However, just as importantly, drums play the essential role of creating the therapeutic atmosphere for the healing sessions of traditional medicine or community rituals. Ekali drums are used for such sessions. These drums are great fun and entertaining. They provide a unique interactive experience while inspiring social group awareness and harmony. Drums are also known to help relaxation, reduce stress, and heal.
CUDJO LEWIS
“After dey free us, you understand me, we so glad, we makee de drum and beat it lak in de Affica soil.”
Cudjo Lewis, one of the 110 slaves who arrived in Alabama after forty-five harrowing days on the slave ship Clotilda. They were the last Africans the Transatlantic Slave Trade had brought to the United States. Cudjo Lewis, the last survivor, passed away in 1935.
MARIA STEWART
Most of our color have been taught to stand in fear of the white man, to work as soon as they could walk, and call “master,” before they could lisp the name of mother. Continual fear and laborious servitude have lessened in us that natural force which belongs to man, or else, in defiance, our men would have boldly contended for their rights. Give the man of color an equal opportunity and you would discover the dignified statesman, the man of science, and the philosopher. But there is no such opportunity, and our powerful ones are determined that there never shall be.
O ye sons of Africa, how can you refrain from crying mightily unto God? Cast your eyes about, look as far as you can see; all is owned by the lordly white. Like king Solomon, who put neither nail nor hammer to the temple, yet received the praise, so also have the white Americans gained themselves a name, while we have been their foundation and support. We have pursued the shadow, they have obtained the substance; we have performed the labor; they have received the profits; we have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits of them!
SOJOURNER TRUTH
Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that ’twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place. And ain’t I a woman? Look at me - look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman? That man over there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to get it right side up again!
JAMES NORCUM
$100 reward will be given for the apprehension and delivery of my Servant Girl Harriet Tubman. She is a light mulatto, 21 years of age, about 5 feet 4 inches, of a corpulent habit, having on her head a thick covering of black hair that curls naturally but which can be combed straight. She speaks easily and has an agreeable carriage. Being a good seamstress, she will probably appear tricked out in gay and fashionable finery. As this girl absconded from the plantation of my son without any known cause or provocation, it is probable she designs to transport herself to the North.
The above reward will be given for apprehending her or securing her in any prison within the United States. All persons are hereby forewarned against harboring her or being in any way instrumental in her escape under the most rigorous penalties of the law.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Friends and Fellow Citizens. He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation has stronger nerves than I do. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability than I do this day. The placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. The fact is, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation from which I escaped is considerable. That I am here today is a matter of astonishment.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence were great men — great enough to give frame to a great age. They were peace men, but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men, but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They believed in order, but not in the order of tyranny. You may well cherish the memory of such men. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.
Fellow Citizens, allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today. What have I to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of freedom embodied in that Declaration extended to us?
Such is not the case. Your independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common; the rich inheritance of justice, liberty and prosperity bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. To drag a man in fetters into the temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems is sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, I would pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The conscience of the nation must be roused, the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed, and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing, empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns are to him, mere bombast, fraud, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages!
LOUIS DELGRÈS (Guadeloupe)
Louis Delgrès was a mulatto leader of the movement in Guadeloupe resisting reoccupation (and thus the reinstitution of slavery) by Napoleonic France. A battle hardened military officer who had long experience fighting Great Britain in the many wars that country had with Revolutionary France, Delgrès took over the resistance movement from Magloire Pélage after it became clear that Pélage was loyal to Napoleon. Delgrès believed that the "tyrant" Napoleon had betrayed both the ideals of the Republic and the interests of France's colored citizens, and intended to fight to the death. After a spirited but hopeless resistance, Delgrès and his followers found themselves trapped on the Matouba Volcano. There, Delgrès and most of his followers chose to commit suicide by detonating their own gun powder stores. This act, though it effectively ended Guadeloupe's native resistance to French authority, had powerful symbolic value and continues to be heralded as an example of exceptional heroism in Guadeloupe and beyond.
SOLITUDE, the mulatto from Guadeloupe
Solitude, a mulatto, was born a slave in 1772 in Guadeloupe. Her negro mother must have been raped during the voyage on the slave ship. According to legend, Solitude was a beautiful, brown skinned woman. Each of her eyes was of a different coloration. It is alleged that her beauty and lustful manners lead powerful men who owned slaves to fight each other with the hope of getting Solitude. When her mother fled into the bushes, she was forced to leave Solitude. Solitude lived with her masters like other mulattos in a plantation. After Napoleon restored slavery in the French colonies, Solitude became a maroon and joined freedom fighters. Blacks had tasted freedom did not want to relinquish it. She was a fierce warrior, expertly wielding a machete against the troops of French General Richepance. Solitude was fearless. When Delgrès and his comrades blew themselves up, Solitude was among them. She was seriously injured by the explosion. She was captured and sentenced to death. But Solitude was pregnant and could not be put to death. She was executed after she gave birth on 29 November 1802. Up to this day, the mystery remains on the whereabouts of her child.