In the early 1990’s, during a visit to a village in the mountains around Man in Côte d’Ivoire, a village whose name I’m afraid I’ve forgotten — I took bad notes if I took notes at all, because I was young and I was dumb — dancers and musicians and theatre troupes came to perform as part of a festival of sorts, which went on for several days. I made some primitive sound recordings on a tape voice recorder, but those mini cassettes are lost, too, along with the memory of the village’s name.
But I do remember the sounds of the drums. Always drums. Marvelous, sensational, dynamite drums. Intoxicating drums. Mesmerizing, beautiful, ever-present. At night, at day, early, late, close by, in the distance. Stirring to move their feet, anybody able. Gently insisting. Go on, they said, loose yourself in trance.
The old musician who played the main drum for the dancer on this photo, hummed as he went into his solos. A deep, loud, rumbling hum, which carried over the sound of the instruments, as his hands beat out the frenzied, rhythm paean. Possessed perhaps, as Chinua Achebe once described participants in a similar scene, “by the spirit of the drums.”
… 30 years ago, in a village whose name I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. But I look at these photos today, and I can still hear the drums. I'm still bewitched by the beautiful beat.
Bibliography
- Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Penguin, 2017.