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Wynlib, Journal Manager, Pages From African Music Vol 5 No 1-5

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20 views3 pages

Wynlib, Journal Manager, Pages From African Music Vol 5 No 1-5

Uploaded by

aykim136
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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STANDARD DRUM PATTERNS IN NIGERIA 37

STANDARD DRUM PATTERNS IN NIGERIA


by

SAMUEL AKPABOT

In the study of African music, it is often dangerous to draw dogmatic conclusions as


what obtains in one part of the continent can many times be entirely different from
the practices in other parts; and even in one particular area of research, care must be
taken to look at exhaustive data before a general conclusion can be made. In spite of this,
I think we can safely say that the drum is the basis of all African instrumental music -
and I am not overlooking the all-xylophone orchestras of the Chopi people, who are the
exception rather than the rule. I would like to mention here that by drum I mean not only
the skin variety, but pot drums, wooden drums, calabash drums and all other instruments
of this variety which fulfil the same functions.
The bigger a drum is, the more it is able to talk and therefore the more involved its
rhythm patterns. These rhythmic patterns become less involved as we come to the
smallest drum which is content just to stress the number of beats in the time signature.
If the music is in 4/ 4 time, it taps out four beats to the bar; if in 3/8 time, it plays three
beats to the bar. This is the basic procedure; in actual practice, this may be varied and we
can have a small drum tapping out the first two beats of every bar and omitting the
third in a piece of music, say in 3/ 8 time; but at no time is anything too involved
attempted.
There is also a sociological twist to this. My experience in Nigerian orchestral music
is that a group of four drums constitute a complete ensemble; the four drums being
made up of father, mother, brother and sister drums representing the four members of an
average African family. Where a fifth drum is added, it is usually a two-tone drum to add
colour to the inner voices. The most talkative of the group is the mother drum with good
reason- a woman (especially when she is excited) can out-talk any man; and here we see
the sense of humour of the traditional African musician in allocating drum patterns to the
various drums of an ensemble. Two examples will perhaps make this point clearer.
The Bata group of drums used in the worship of Sango, the god of thunder is made up of
Jya Ilu Bata(mother drum); Emele Ako (male drum); Emele Abo (female drum) and Kudi
(small drum). I have mentioned that a fifth drum (where it occurs) is usually put in to
augment the inner voices and strike a balance between a high-pitch drum and a low-pitch
one. Sometimes, instead of a fifth drum, a twin gong is brought in to fulfil this function
as in the Abeli group of drums of the Itsekiri people of Mid-Western Nigeria. The
instrumentation here consists of: Yogume (mother drum); Agba (medium pitch drum);
Otogume (low pitch drum); Okere (high pitch drum) and Oma (twin gong).
There are in Nigeria two main types of drum orchestras: those used for ritual worship
and those used for festival occasions. Drum orchestras used for ritual or ancestral
worship do not, as a rule, make use of gongs as opposed to dance or festival orchestras
wi.i.ch have gongs in their instrumentation. The Abeli group of drums is a dance or-
chestra, which probably accounts for the presence of a gong. Here ·again it is very
difficult to draw a hard and fast conclusion. We can only lay down guide lines as to the
type of instrumentation generally found in any given situation .
.A clear exception to the family of drums we have been discussing is the Oreyi group
of drums of the Ibos of the East Central State of Nigeria. This orchestra is made up of
four talking drums (Igba) and one large wooden drum (Ekwe). Normally, in a standard
drum ensemble the mother drum is the soloist of the group; but here, since the four drums
38 AFRICAN MUSIC SOCIETY JOURNAL

used are of the same variety, a wooden drum is introduced to give a contrasting tone and
act as the soloist. '
Since we now know that in a standard ensemble there is a talking drum, a low-pitch
drum, a medium-pitch drum and a small drum, it is possible to deduce what type of
standard rhythm each of these four types of drum produces. Since the talking drum of the
group has an improvisatory function, its rhythmic patterns vary with the virtuosity
of the performer; and so it is impossible to reproduce what could be regarded as a
standard rhythm. It is, however, possible to determine the kind of rhythm that the other
drums play in any given situation because their capabilities are limited.
We can broadly divide Mrican drum rhythms into two:
(a) Rhythms that exist within an all-drum ensemble,
(b) Rhythms which accompany melodies and melodic fragments.
In Western Nigeria, the majority of drum ensembles are made up of the hour-glass
drum variety and a standard drum pattern is detectable in common use by the soloist of
the group. I have mentioned that the soloist in a drum group varies his rhythms in
accordance with a particular situation, or the melody he happens to be accompanying at a
particular time. But in between bursts of improvisation, this rhythmic pattern can be
detected:
This rhythmic pattern is analogous to a bridge
~ passage in a sonata or an episode in a fugue. The
*·.. log._..--._.__ player uses this rhythmic cliche as a sort of rest period to
3 ~ I ~ ~· ~ ~ I 11 think out what style his next set of improvisations would
~!.lf-_,..-H._~--flr-t-Jit----it take. In any ensemble of hour-glass drums in Western
Nigeria, the above pattern is invariably heard at one
< stage or the other during the performance.
Drum rhythms in Northern Nigeria provide a different situation, where drum
orchestras are rare; but when they do occur, the instruments used are similar to those of
Western Nigeria, sometimes with slight regional
modifications. A Festival drum orchestra recorded by
the present writer during a Moslem festival at Jos, in
Northern Nigeria, used three types of drums: Kanango,
a high-pitch drum; Kuntuknru, a medium-pitch drum;
Kanango, a small drum with a very piercing sound. The
player of the Kanango also played the Dankarikpi
strapped to his leg producing this rhythm:
A comparison between this rhythm and that used by the Ogqji drum for an accompani-
ment of a flute orchestra in Makurdi, Northern Nigeria, reveals a common pattern:
This pattern (marked X) is a standard rhythmic
~ drum pattern frequently found in the instrumental
.. 60 music of Northern Nigeria. A rhythm very similar
#-=...:.......:;....-,.,.lhll. ...-__,.~..,._-t to this is also found in sakara music of Western
Nigeria where the small drum used for this purpose
(shaped like a tambourine) plays this rhythm.

~ 'r: :Ja'ttr I
S'I'ANDARD DRUM PA'I''I'BRNS IN NIGERIA 39

A comparison between the rhythm of the Koria (calabash) drum used to accompany the
one-string viol in Northern Nigeri~n and the Kanango drum used in Western Nigerian
music reveals similar patterns:
For even though one is a skin

~ I
drum and the other a calabash
drum, they are both small drums

Koria:~t r.,._r y....--;r


--a---.wlt---4--¥--r.,..........uH--1'-1
-T-.
and the similarity in rhythmic
patterns is not unconnected with
this fact. Incidentally, the name
Kanango is used in Western and
Northern Nigeria for the same
Kanango:~2
Mrrfr IFfr71rl type of drum; but since their
functions are different, they
produce different rhythms. The
Kanango rhythm reproduced
above is very different from that used by its Northern Nigeria variety.
A study of drum rhythms in the Eastern States of Nigeria reveals three principal
varieties:

East Central State

(b) Rivers State

(c) South Eastern State

It is of course possible to have variants on these standard rhythms but the basic
stylistic approach remains the same. In all these examples, there is an accent on the second
beat; and where triplets are used, the last beat is a weak one. Triplets are frequently used
on two tone drums and only occasionally on other small drums. The last of the drum
examples from the South Eastern State is particularly interesting because this rhythm is
also used by larger drums in the Efik area of the State. It can be said to be a standard
drum xhythm so characteristic of the drumming of the Efik people.

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