THE DRUM PHILOSOPHY

The drum beater unknowingly turns the gyre into frenzy mood. Zen and their doctrines of No Mind or rather the western philosophy of Think to Be, the African drum speaks of nihilistic groan - ‘To whom is it well?’ This is Chinua Achebe’s writing in Things Fall Apart.

To Whom is it well? To whom is it well? The drum beats and beats and beats, faster, medium, slower. The rhetoric goes on, echoed across the valleys. The villages beyond tell where births are, women are being given to marriage, deaths have occurred, elders are gathering, an enemy has encroached and the sword of death has visited.

To whom is it well is neither a happy nor a sad statement. It is both acceptance and the sarcasm of it. It centers on a person to whom the universe is the centre. In recognition that it is to none that all is well, Africans tend to rely on each other for their help in times of happiness and adversary. Ubuntu (Bantu philosophy) recognizes that I am because you are.

No one plays and enjoys the drum in solitude. It is not a personal thing that keeps you ahead by the way you argue or meditate. Whoever hears the beats joins. It calls you to participate, sing along and dance to the rhythm. In otherwise moments, the sad and slow beat scatters all happiness and shreds hope. Despondency is experienced by all, the beaters, the singers, the dancers, the lame.

A talk can make Africans share their opinions. Eating and walking together is meant for sharing matters happening and those arising. The presence of a drum associates them on a level that the young, old and strangers conspire for the general feeling. It could be said that drums were also used to notify the approach of war but this could have been early in Iron Age. In golden age the drum was purely spiritual and ceremonial.

A drum sensitizes a large number of people. One drummer can move a whole village to the market place. No other people, in their need to sound divertive can set their drums and call crowds to their side. When two drum crowds meet, pitches are increased, body shakes exaggerated, songs sang in unison and a fuse occurs with the drummers taking middle if not a forward position. If need be to have each crowd follow its path, there are leaders who control crowds, keeping beaters insulated from shakes and falls of dancers. A soloist keeps up with recent songs- that tell of a story, warns, mocks, encourages, refutes, advises, and gives hope.

Under the full moon, days after the death of a parent, as the night fire sparks, drummers by the tomb keep the vigil to send the spirit of the deceased peacefully into Hades.  A bull is slaughtered at first cock crow. It could be a passive strenuous vigil without the beats. It could be hard labour for the drummer if the heavy thing did not exchange hands. Small drums, vidindi that resonates to the groan of a drum sharpens the mind to remind all why the drum cries. The way in is out.

To whom it is well hates the sound of a drum. He calls it the primitive of acts. He bans and licenses it as though it were an evil. He in his folly opts for modes that are comparatively traverse, exaggerated, soul destroying and selfish.