Afropop Worldwide. It was a superb program about “drum speech”–a fascinating subject that has interested ethnomusicologists for a long time. Ned Sublette writes about it in his masterful study, Cuba ...

NàìjáTreks: What is your original English name? Ayantunde: I am not English. I am German. My German name is Anselm Ramacher. I was born in Remscheid, Northwestern Germany, I grew up in the south ...

July 27 (UPI) --In West Africa, drummers speak through their instruments -- literally. According to a new study, the dùndúns drum -- in the hands of a skilled percussionist -- can accurately mimic the ...

In the Yoruba faith, there is a thing called destiny. The story of how Mark Underwood, an African American from Indiana, gets to Puerto Rico and becomes Otura Mun, a Babaláwo priest in the Yoruba ...

Although modern musical instruments like the piano, guitar, trumpet amongst others are fast taking over the musical landscape across Africa, the place of the Yoruba ‘gangan’ or talking drum, as it is ...

Musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are considered virtuosos, guitarists who could make their instruments sing. Drummers in west Africa who play hourglass-shaped percussion instruments ...

In the days before the web shrank the world, hearing traditional music made in a distant country meant getting on a plane and going there yourself. Rewarding, but expensive. Plan B involved checking ...

It was not only about drumming. Organisers of the yearly African Drum Festival in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, held a conference tagged: Drumming for advancement, a workshop and an exhibition at ...

I didn't know how much I didn't know about drums. There are drums that talk, that can imitate speech. There are drums grouped in families for the purpose of talking to each other. Tapping a drum with ...