"Dear Bernadine:
Thank you very much for this article. I am going to keep this on my desktop so I can refer to it often.
I have been reading portions of it on various occasions. As I have repeatedly said African drums communicate in the language of the ethnic group. This is what makes it so difficult to understand the multiple languages of Africa. There are not many African drum or music polyglots. The number of African languages creates the language barriers making it impossible to have music polyglots. I am told that there are more than 2000 languages on the continent.
You recall Godwin Agbeli who I brought from Ghana to teach at NYU. He performed at Brooklyn College Ngomas 72, Ewe drum language and Akan drum languages.
He stated that one could live three lifetimes in Ghana and not be able to understand all the music of the Ewe people. He was an Ewe person.
When I demonstrated Greenotation to Duro Ladipo of Nigeria, he was stunned that I could actually write music for theYoruba Iya-Ilu talking drums as well as the Bata drums. He invited me to return to Nigeria to assist him in putting music for the BATA drums in written format. My first assignments came from Nigeria, the Timi of Ede and Duro Ladipo. But you know that Nigeria had many coup d'etats and my Fulbright assignments were rescinded. Both of these artists died and I was never
able to fulfill the assignments.
My question to them was the Bata Drums that are used in the Caribbean are not the same as those of Nigeria. Thus what tones or words of the language are they NOT able to produce. Western music has a conclusive identifier - namely "Middle "C". Middle "C" is middle C even when the instrument is out of tune. African drumming has no such conclusive identifier because their drumming is based on individual languages.
I have been asked at conferences about Yoruba Instruments and my response has been the same. Until the Yoruba people can show me a conclusive identifier, then there is no meeting of the minds. Some outsiders (non-Yoruba, non-African ) have come up with an approach that deals with how the musician moves his shoulders in performance of the Bata drum which I did not see any clarity in this as a conclusive identifier.
There were some good documents on how the drum speaks produced by G. Niangoran-Bouah in his writings as well as a film produced by, I believe, Ghana Film Corporation that could serve as a strong foundation for this. I believe that they were done in the Akan language. After all is said and done, I am reminded of the words of Professor Albert Mawere Opoku who warned that African music and dance is about a people and their culture and no one has the right to adulterate it, not even other Africans.
There was a study that said within a few years the Yoruba language will no longer exist. I studied Yoruba with Olatunji and the Yoruba people are gifted in playing the Iya-Ilu dun-dun drum as they recite their poetry. It can move you to tears. I hope that anxious Africans do not misuse their culture and try to change it to a melodic idiom. African music is largely percussion in nature and must be safeguarded as such. African culture is too valuable to be misused.
Best
Doris"
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