A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter I-11:  The Respect of Drumming and How Drumming Started in Dagbon

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Drummers and chiefs; why chiefs need drummers; the family relationship of chiefs and commoners; the origin of drumming:  Bizuŋ as the son of Naa Nyaɣsi; origins of Namo-Naa; original drumming of the land-priests in Dagbon:  Ʒɛm; the eldership of the guŋgɔŋ and yua over the luŋa; the seniority of the luŋa; the respect of drummers and chiefs


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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Respect of drumming begins with learning

Ways drummers show a person's respect

Origins of drummers:  Bizuŋ and Naa Nyaɣsi

Origins of Namɔɣu:  Bizuŋ and Naa Zulandi

Origins of drumming:  the tindanas; guŋgɔŋ and flute

Music of the tindanas and chiefs:  Ʒɛm

Relations of respect between drummers and chiefs

The respect of drummers in Dagbon

Respect and learning drumming


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Proverbs and Sayings

We drummers learn our work with seriousness, and we go to towns.

A person's weakness is from his town, and a person's heaviness is from his town.

If they call you a monkey, you should let your tail be long.

When someone dies and you go to the funeral house, you talk of death.  Where there is a wedding and you go to the wedding house, you talk of weddings.  When there is a naming and you go, you talk of birth and children.

If you use somebody's name to call a different fellow, the fellow won't agree.

In Dagbon here, when a chief is sitting, or when a patient person is sitting, he wants to hear of his grandfathers from a drummer.

A person does not praise himself:  it is someone who will praise you, not you yourself.

A human being is made of four parts.

Too much eye-opening brings a lot of foolishness, and our educated Dagbamba are too wise.

We don't take someone's songs to praise another person, because someone's grandfather is not another man's grandfather.

If not because of us drummers, there would be no chiefs in Dagbon.

Without a drummer, there is no chieftaincy.

“There is a drummer and there is a chief”:  that is how our tradition is.

It is in chieftaincy that we drummers have strength, and it is in drumming that a chief has strength.

Wisdom does not die.

Our drumming started with sadness.

If you want to eat any property, it is good you eat it from the door of your family.

Drumming is like if you enter into water.  Anywhere you have to swim around is just in front of you. And so everyone and his teacher's house.

If you see somebody having a lot of sense, it is because of worries that he got his sense.

That is the meaning of Namɔɣu:  all of you are sucking my breast.

Our talk is dark, and we are standing in darkness.

Iif you want to follow a snake until you see its ears, you will be very tired.

Bizuŋ is every drummer's grandfather.  As Namo-Naa is our grandfather, that is Bizuŋ's child.

A Gurunsi man knows the one who buys him.

The one who does bad, it is waiting for his child.
Ŋun tum ka di biɛ, din gul' o bia.

He who does bad, he is the one who will listen with his ear.
Ŋun tum ka di biɛ, ŋun gbili tibli

When you ask your mother's child, “Who are you?”:  then what of you?

The house of Namogu has strength:  plenty!
Namɔɣ' yili mal' kpiɔŋ, kpam!

It is drummers who will give someone respect, and it is drummers who will reduce someone's importance.

You have to give respect before you will get respect.

If you take your white heart and give respect to others, your respect will extend.

Our work is not a work that will die.  If our grandfathers had not been there, that would have been all.  But our grandfathers were there, and this drumming started with our grandfathers.  If they had thrown it away and let it fall on the ground, that would have been all.  But they have given this drumming to us.  As they are not here again, we are still holding the work they were doing and the sense that they had.  In this world, every person will die, but wisdom will not die.  And so the work we have learned from our grandfathers, we are holding it well, and we are teaching our children.  That is why they say that a learned person does not die.

An old person does not die.

A seed will bear fruit, and everybody will eat from it.

If God permits and the Holy Prophet agrees, He will give us good sleep to sleep.

May God let the wall be nice, and our elders will sit down and will lean against the wall, and we the children will thank God for that.

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