Have you ever heard of an instrument called a talking mouth? There are African drums, often with clocks, and often in African music. But the reason is that they are called speaking drums. Much like smoke-signals Native Americans, African tribes used talking drums to communicate with each other.
However, unlike those smoke signals, which usually send generic messages, talking drums can be used to approximate vocal language, and in complex situations dialogue can take place very well between drummers more than twenty miles away. Conversations between drummers usually took place about five miles away and then passed from drummer to drummer in more remote villages.
The use of talking drums as a means of communication was used for the most part by those peoples who lived in the countries of western Africa . > such as Ghana and Nigeria. The drum speakers work well to communicate the very evolutionary thought that the vocal languages themselves of these African tribes have a tonal component in which each syllable of a word contains a different word.
Talking drums can imitate these voices quite effectively, and since language has a natural rhythm anyway, drums are particularly suitable for communication. Obviously, anyone using a talking drum must possess what is said to be “pitch perfect” by a music master. it would not work at all to communicate with a language that does not depend on tonal differences like English. If he played a speaking drum just imitated in Latin, we would all know how many syllables there are in each word.
The Yoruba epitomized the use of talking drums. It is a talking drum of the Yoruba tribe, in fact it is known as an hourglass and dun-dun-dunum. The drummer holds a gild over his arm and, bent over, strikes with a mallet. On the outside of the speaker drum are tied leather cords that can be squeezed to control the drummer’s pitch. The very beat of the drums, as has been pointed out, can travel several miles across the open plains of Africa.
Speaking drums are not only used to send messages, but also play a part in many social rituals. Ceremonial tributes were often paid to the spirits of the tribes, or to honor living chiefs of the tribes. Talking drums can also be compared to Simon Cowell: the ability to talk with drummers is often practiced in traditional African sports from dancing to wrestling. A person using a talking drum can comment either positively or negatively on the dancing or wrestling abilities of another.
So effective was the use of talking drums to communicate messages that for a time it was banned in the United States to prevent rebellion slaves could be incited.
