Details

Field of Interest

World Music

Copyright Message

Material sourced from the International Library of African Music. Copyright International Library of African Music.

Description

This recording of the sound of genuine talking drums was made on the banks of the Congo River near Stanleyville, where the river steamers coming up-stream from Leopoldville, 1000 miles away, are held up by the first rapids named after H. M. Stanley, the great explorer. He first saw them in 1876 on his famous first journey across Africa from East to West. The Lokele people of this region have always been famous for their drum messages. Stanley, writing about them said "They have not yet adopted electric signals but possess a system of communication quite as effective. Their huge drums by being struck in several parts convey language as clear to the initiated as vocal speech." The drum messages can still be heard up and down the River although now-a-days with modern communication methods the people do not need to use their drums as they used to, and consequently it is said to be dying out, as so many other African crafts. A missionary, the Rev. John Carrington, from the Baptist Mission at Yakusu wrote an excellent book on these Lokele drums that Stanley heard. For years he had been studying the Lokele language of the people around the mission at Yakusu, but at the time of recording he was many miles down the river, and not available. His colleague from the Yakusu Mission, Mr. W. H. Ford, who had also made a keen study of the language, here explains something of the theory behind the sending of drum messages in central Congo, as experienced by both himself and by John Carrington.

Content Type

Field recording (raw)

Duration

13 mins

Anthropologist / Ethnographer

Hugh Tracey, 1903-1977

Format

Audio

Sub Genre

Spoken Word, African Drumming

Date Recorded

1952

Series Number

TR129

Subject

World Music, Anthropology, Music & Performing Arts, Social Sciences, Africa, Cultural anthropology