The West African instrument dùndún is also known as “talking drum” because players can match the pitch and rhythm of speech patterns on it. A new study reveals just how closely dùndún players match ...

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 ...

Click to open image viewer. The Talking Drum is an hourglass-shaped pressure drum so-named because it can imitate spoken language's intonations and rhythms. At either end of the drum’s body, the ...

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 ...

Famous talking drummer and the cultural ambassador of the Ooni of Ife, Aralola Olamuyiwa, simply known as Ara, has recalled how people tried to discourage her from playing the talking drum. Ara, who ...

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 ...

As a child, Oluwakemi Famugbode Adetula took to playing the drums. Now an adult and mother of three boys, she’s blazing a trail with her Gangan (talking drum) on a path traditionally meant for men.