Article: African drums in symphony hall: village signals and intercontinental encounters.

The practice of sending messages across villages through the sounds of talking drums was (and probably still is) an important aspect of traditional communications systems in African cultures. In times of emergency each village would pick up messages sent to it and transmit them to the next village. Through such relays, long distances were covered and the geographical span could be quite impressive. In the course of the twentieth century, African talking drums found their way into cultures outside Africa and, although they have continued to be used as speech surrogates, their messages are understood in ways different from those of the home cultures. For one thing, some of ...

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