The Drum


	S O S Y E T E D U M A R C H E , I N C


	M A M B O V Y E Z O S O S Y E T E D U M A R C H E T H E F O U R C I R C L E S H O U S E O F T H E W A L K E R

Drum Is the Ear of God: Africa's Inner World of Music

Music and Inner Life

Every culture lives within the interplay of two movements, an outer movement of performing the activities necessary for the continuation of physical life and an inner movement towards relating to forces, being and intelligence beyond and above that life. The music of a culture is a measure of the relationship and balance between these two movements.

There is a music, nowadays practiced mainly in certain places where the traditional spirit has not completely given way to modernity, that uses its power over the feelings to cut through the self-absorption of everyday life and bring one to an experience of communion, the sense of being part of the vast play of forces that encompass and connect all beings. In Africa music and dance evoke a sense of communion on many levels in a rich tapestry that includes spiritual aspiration, religious experience, evocation of deity, psychic and physical empowerment, enactment of myth and history, teaching, healing, courtship, cultural assimilation and solidarization, mutual criticism, celebration, entertainment and exercise.

Traditional Africa maintains a distinction between religious music and social music. This distinction corresponds to the widespread understanding that spiritual life and material life are on different levels. While many processes of a secular nature may take place in a religious context and vice versa, this is felt as part of the unique drama of each situation, not as an undesirable contradiction. In effect, this ambiguity represents an affirmation that spiritual life and material life are inseparably united as constant reciprocal movements of the human spirit.

In Africa, as in many other traditional cultures, religious music and dance play the central role of invoking possession-trance. In possession, the person loses consciousness of himself as an individual and becomes the vehicle or mouthpiece of a "deity," a personification of one of the great forces of the inner or the outer world. The actions and speech of the person possessed are regarded as those of the deity and are looked to for advice, healing, prophecy, and magical power.

The deities in whose service music and dance are performed are traditionally understood not as being divine in themselves-rather, their divinity is a particle of the Divinity of a higher principle, the creative principle behind the Universe. But this principle is already always everywhere and in everything and hence needs no service to call its presence. No special temporal material condition, such as a temple, ceremony, or artifact, can concentrate its force. Its action at our level is non-action. Its symbol is silence. In music, it is expressed by the rhythmic pulses that are heard innerly though the instrument is not played; through their silence, these pulses give shape and meaning to the rhythm that is heard outerly.

The Great Principle is too far above the level of man for him to relate to It directly. The deities are necessary intermediaries through whom man and God address each other. In some traditions the drums themselves are also specially invested as divine intermediaries. The Dogon say that Drum is the ear of God and one must beat it with the attitude that one is speaking to God on behalf of mankind. This attitude requires respect, but also great force. In the words of a religious song of the Blekete cycle (Blekete is the name of a deity of the Ewe people of Ghana and also the name of the principal drum that is used in this cycle): "A feeble effort will not fulfill the self."

Possession is a magic door to religious experience, but it alone does not constitute a complete relationship with the divine. To have this, to make available to oneself the powers and knowledge that are the property of a divinity, requires a further payment-to make oneself morally divine, to conduct one's life in a way that is pleasing to the divinity. Many obligations and prohibitions corresponding to each deity are known in tradition; however, detailed observances are less important than the prime moral law. This law is the sacredness of Life, which includes the need to understand the particular place and way of each living being. Through the experience of dance, song, and music the law is conveyed and received collectively and individually. A song of the Blekete cycle expresses the following thought:

In God's shrine, this world,
What everybody wants is a good life.
Why do people always make trouble?
God has given principles to live by,
But only you yourself can follow them.

Traditional African music is, first of all, participatory. All the activities of daily life may be-and often are-accompanied by music, song, and rhythm. And every day, there may be a special event in which music and dance is the central activity. Almost everyone present will be actively involved in several different ways at once, playing instruments, dancing, singing, hand-clapping, observing, commenting, being commented upon.

Subtle verbal expressions may be encoded in drum language. Almost everybody can understand this language at a basic level; often there will be other levels of meaning woven in which can be understood only by drumming initiates of a certain level of experience. This is the source of the concept of the "talking drum." Drum language may be used for reciting history and myth, for praising kings and patrons, for topical social commentary, for long-distance communication.

In Africa, music touches everything. The traditional musician acts in extra-musical roles that vary from culture to culture within Africa. Among the Senufo, he may be healer and sorcerer. Among the Mandingo, there is a special caste of musicians who serve as historians, having memorized vast repertories of songs and narratives commemorating past events and genealogies. In several nations, there are styles of drumming closely associated with the chieftancy, the king himself being the master drummer among masters (as for example with the Watusi and the Dagomba). Each craft or occupational tradition, such as weaving, blacksmithing, the military, farming, or hunting, has its music and its musicians who play before, during, and after every major activity; this music plays an important role in preparing for and regulating the performance of these activities.

Within this context, a very special role is played by the master musician, who must be not only a consummate artist, but also wise and roundly educated and capable of exercising his power of influence with great responsibility. He must be deeply experienced concerning human nature and its manifestations in relation to the experiences which music can induce. He must develop and constantly exercise an extraordinary alertness and perceptiveness. There is a saying that a master drummer must have seven eyes, and that with these eyes he can see the skeleton inside people.

In order to be able to fulfill this role, an individual is carefully selected and intensively trained, often from a very early age. The training of musicians is a complex matter, differing from tribe to tribe, and even for different types of musicians within one tribe. One theme is apprenticeship, a special relationship to an elder musician who becomes the student's musical father. In the frequent case of family transmission, this mentor would be his actual father. Another theme is initiation. There are numerous secret societies with special music associated with particular rites. Certain music may be played only by initiates of a certain grade. A third theme is a kind of musical scholarship which is an age-old tradition in Africa. Some musicians aspire to know well not only the music of their own community but also that of others, and spend years traveling widely to learn and to carry local music to distant places. Under the conditions prevailing in Africa of numerous coexisting independent but culturally related ethnic groups, this exchange has contributed to the development of a very complex and mature musical culture.

The body of knowledgeable musicians exercises a sophisticated critical influence which plays an important role in musical training, since every player is always being judged by a large number of knowledgeable peers. This tradition supports a system of incentive for personal effort and accomplishment quite separate from the incentives arising from biological imperatives and from economic life.