As we have talked about how Dagbamba follow funerals, it seems that I have curved the talks, but I want you to know that it is all one: talks enter one another. I have talked about the work we drummers do at funeral houses and how our Dagbamba dances enter into our gatherings. As it is, is it not inside the talk of drumming? It is there like that. And so today, we are going to join the talk of drumming again and follow it straightforward on the part of us drummers and the work we do, and how we are holding one another inside it. And I am going to start it with how a drummer brings forth his child, and the child gets up to start drumming, too.
Truly, drumming talks are very difficult. You can't compare drumming to any other type of playing in Dagbon. Some people enter goonji and learn how to play. But as for drumming, no one can enter drumming. I'm talking about Dagbon here. If you see someone beating a drum, he is already a drummer; his father — a drummer; his grandfather — a drummer; his great-grandfathers — drummers. That is how drumming comes about. When we see a drummer whose grandfather was not a drummer, or whose mother's father was not a drummer, to us, he is not a drummer. And so drumming is inside the family, and it doesn't end.
As for a drummer's son, the drumming doesn't follow him. And if you are a drummer and you learn it and you put the drum down, it doesn't matter. If you want, you beat. If you don't want, you stop. If your father is a drummer and he brings you forth and you are a man or a boy, if you leave the drum, it won't do anything to you. Nothing is going to happen to you. But when your father is a drummer and he brings you forth and you are a girl, whatever happens, when you bring forth your children, the drumming will come into them. By all means, they will take one of your children and give him a drum. If not that, the drumming will not leave a woman's children. Trouble will be following them everyday. But when a woman's child takes a drum, he will stand in place of the woman. And at that time, all the children the woman has given birth to will be free. And so as for a woman, whatever happens, that is how the drumming comes about. And these children we are giving birth to, if they are boys, at least some of them will take up the drum. And any girl we give birth to, if she grows up and gives birth, we will collect one of the children to learn drumming.
When a drummer brings forth a child, whether the child is a boy or a girl, how the drummer's white heart is, he takes a drum — in the night or in the evening or in the morning — and he stands. He will start by praising God, and he beats the drum to greet God. And from there the drummer will start with Naa Zanjina and take Naa Zanjina to come up to the present day. This is how we beat it: you praise God before you come to the chiefs. All the chiefs who followed Naa Zanjina, he praises all of them. And then the drummer will come to the town's chief, and he will beat the drum and praise him, too. His white heart is making him beat in praise of the chiefs. That is the way he is going to beat and people who get to know that he the drummer, his wife has given birth to a baby. That is why we beat it. Anybody who will hear it will get to know that a drummer's wife has given birth. And then he puts the drum down. If the drummer is someone who prays and he is going to make a naming day for the child, then they will have it in seven days. If the drummer is not someone who prays, then when the navel falls, they will call the child's name. And they will start looking after the child.
When the child grows to about three years getting to four years, if it is a boy, they will get the child a small drum. This drum is the one I have told you about: in the olden days it was just two gourds which they would join together, and they would sew a skin to cover it. We call it giŋgaɣinyɔɣu. Listen well: it's not giŋgalinyɔɣu; giŋgalinyɔɣu is a snail. If you don't pronounce it well, somebody will think you're talking about the shell of a snail, and it's not the shell of a snail. And so this giŋgaɣinyɔɣu, a small drummer will get up, and they will sew a very small drum like that for him. The type I sew for my children nowadays, we use a tin can to make it. We get a tin can and cover it with a skin, and we get a string and tie it. Then we give it to the child. As the child is small, you have to get him a small drum like that, and it will not be too heavy for the child. The child will be beating it around the compound. As he is beating it, he hasn't got sense; he is just beating it. You will see him running around the compound and beating, and running and entering houses, and people will be laughing. He will be beating whatever he wants. Whether the beating is good or bad, he will continue beating. Whether he is singing good or bad songs, he will just continue singing. A small child will be doing that and his wrist will become fast on the drum. The noise he is making with his mouth will let him get to know how to sing.
If the child continues beating that one, it will take time before he will know how to beat the same as the old people beat. When he begins to get it, we will change the drum and give him another type. Even the child himself, as he comes to get sense, he will throw away the giŋgaɣinyɔɣu. At that time, say, when he is getting to six years or eight years old, they will get a small drum which is also not heavy for him. It is just like lumbila, the small drum, and it is made the same way they make ours, only it is even smaller, and we call it lunnyiriŋga. If you sew that one and give it to the child, to beat it will not be difficult for him. And to teach him singing, too, as he was shouting and making noise when he was just starting, it will be easy for him to sing. Such a child, when he is getting from eight years to ten years, he is now becoming all right in drumming, and to teach him is easy.
At that time the child doesn't learn singing, but they always take him when they go to beat the drums. He will be watching until his hand becomes fast and his wrist will be able to do the work it wants. And the one who is holding the child, if he wants to go to someplace, the child will carry his drum for him on his head. If the one holding him is going along with other drummers, they will tie all the drums together for the boy to carry. If this boy carries the drums to where they are going, if it is a funeral house or a wedding house, the boy will untie the drums and give each drum to its owner. At that place there will be other children who are also learning drumming, but none of these boys will be given drums to beat. The only work for these children is to be standing with their masters: any time the drummers are beating the drum and someone puts his hand into his pocket to give them something, these boys will run and get the money. If someone is dancing and the person's relatives or friends come out to give that person money, these boys will be there picking up any of the money that falls on the ground. And so a child who is about ten years old, he will only be following the drummers to where they will be playing so that he will be collecting money for them.
And sometimes too you will see that a small child will be holding a drum and beating. I have told you that when we are going to start drumming, we start it with Dakoli n-nyɛ bia, paɣalana n-nyɛ kpɛma: “A bachelor is a child and a married person is an elder.” That is what an old drummer will be telling him, and the child will be saying it. And the child will be beating the response: Kon-kon-kon-kon. When the child finishes learning it, the old drummer will teach him Ŋum mali lana ŋun' di, mbayee, namlana; ŋun ka lana ŋun' di di, mbayee, namlana: “The one who has someone to look after him will eat; the one who has no one holding him will not eat.” After that, the next thing the child will learn is “The one who says there is no God, he should look behind and look forward.” And again, “The one who says there is no God should look at the bee's wax and know its inside and outside.” These are all the songs they will be teaching the small child, and the child will be singing and beating Kon-kon-kon-kon. And at times, with some people, when they are going to start a child fresh, they use Namɔɣ' yil' mal' k-piɔŋ, kpam! first: “The house of Namɔɣu has strength, plenty!” I told you that a drummer can start beating, and he will beat that one first, that the drummers' house has strength. But Dakoli n-nyɛ bia, as for that one, it is standing that if a child is going to start, you start him with that. And inside drumming too, in our father's house, how drumming begins, it begins with Namɔɣ' yil' mal' k-piɔŋ, and so the two are following together.
As for all this, the child will be continuing to learn it, but his real work will be following the drummers and collecting the money. He will be doing this up to the time he is twelve years or thirteen years old, and by then, a child with sense will get to know how his masters are beating. And the songs too, he will know how to sing them. If they are going to a wedding house or a funeral house or a naming house, as he has always been going with them, he will get to know many people and how his elders praise them with the drum. Any time he gets a drum in his armpit, he knows how to beat it, and whenever he comes across somebody his master was praising some time ago, he will know how to beat the drum and praise the fellow. Any type of playing he goes to, whether it is a wedding or a funeral or a naming, he will get to know how it is.
They will teach the child to sing like that until they come to the grandfathers of the child. As they are doing that, they are not teaching the child the talks of Namɔɣu's house, but his actual grandfathers. And so as for our grandfather Bizuŋ or our grandfather Ashaɣu, they don't go up to that point. They cut it from the place their door started coming out, and the door they show the child is on the part of the towns where they are sitting. And so the teaching of the child's grandfather is from the point where the child's father's door is in the drumming. We drummers are all one family, but we have different lines inside it. They will follow it and show that it comes like that up to the time this one passed here, and another one passed there, and this other one also passed there. For example, you see how walking sticks are: some of them are tall, and there is a point you have to hold before you can walk with it. Some people will hold the bottom, some people in the middle, some at the top. The walking stick is tall, and you'll take it at the place where you can hold it. Everybody will hold like that, but it is the one stick: everybody and where his hand will reach. And again, you see how Yaa-Naa's grandchildren are: some of their fathers ate Yendi, and some of their fathers didn't eat. And so some of them are coming from the grandfather's side and others are from the father's side, and it is through that drumming you know how to praise them. That is why in Dagbani, we say that everybody has his door to enter into one house. That is how it is.
And so if they are going to start the grandfather's side, they will cut it from that point and be coming to the child's father. Some of us, this is the way we start it with the children. As for me, when I was a child getting up, I started at our grandfather Palo-Naa Kosaɣim. Palo-Naa Dariʒɛɣu and Palo-Naa Kosaɣim: that is the point I started. That is our door. As everyone has a grandfather, so too every drummer has got a grandfather. The drummer who is teaching the child knows the child's grandfathers, and he will take the grandfathers and be teaching him. He will show the child that “This person gave birth to your grandfather so-and-so, and this person gave birth to your grandfather so-and-so, up to the time they gave birth to your own father.” This is how he is going to be showing the grandfather's side. He will teach him like that for about a year. If the child is fast, it will not be up to a year; in six months, he will stand at his grandfathers.
As the child has reached his grandfathers, the one teaching him will stop him there for the moment. And a young drummer who wants to learn more, when his heart wants, he will be going round to older drummers. And what he will be doing is to be going in the night to the one who will be teaching him. He will be sitting at his teacher's feet and pressing his teacher's body and legs. While he is pressing, that is the time the old drummer will be teaching him the songs. The child will learn the songs before he will learn how to beat the drum. And the child will still be following drummers to places, and they will be teaching him more.
If you are a drummer, the children you give birth to, some of them will grow up and you will not teach them how to beat a drum, but they know how to beat it. Such a child, we call him lun dɔɣirli, that is, a child born by a drummer. Whenever he grows up, whatever you beat, he also knows how to beat it. If it is singing, he knows how to sing. As we are sitting down now, you see how my son Fatawu is: he is now about eleven years old. No one ever taught him how to beat a guŋgɔŋ, but he knows how to beat it. He is not strong, but when he beats guŋgɔŋ, you will hear it well. He knows how to beat a drum, too. And so to teach him anything on the part of drumming, if it is the praising of chiefs or the praising of people, it will not be difficult. Such a child is the one we call lun dɔɣirli. He is born a drummer.
And there are some children, and to teach them is difficult. As for a child who doesn't want to learn, if you are a drummer and you are teaching a child how to beat a drum and he is not doing well, you will use the drumstick and be knocking his head all the time. Sometimes you will knock his head and open it. It doesn't matter. Nothing will happen. When you knock a child today and tomorrow, he will get sense, and the day after tomorrow he will know how to beat, and you will not knock him again. Not all drummers do that. The one who was knocked by the stick, if he is teaching somebody, he will tell him. He will remove his hat and show the scar and say, “You are learning drumming in an easy way. Formerly they were knocking us with sticks.” Someone who doesn't knock the child, if the child is not learning, he will just become annoyed and will not teach the child again. And so someone who knocks the child with the stick to teach him how to beat the drum, he is better than the one who doesn't knock the child but refused to teach him.
At present, none of the younger ones learn drumming as we learned it. If not because of the changes in the world, those who are teaching you the drumming are not people who are matured to the standard to be teaching others and knocking them with the stick. During my time it was rather they who could be beaten by one who was holding them. People up to their size could be beaten by their masters. At present, if not because the world has been changing, I would have the right to beat them. When we were learning drumming, our masters who were teaching us were beating us, and we couldn't say anything. The reason they were beating us is that they knew that in the future we would gain something from this drumming, and so they didn't want to joke with drumming at all. They used to be forcing us to learn it. When I was going to send these people to make practice with you, I warned them that they must teach you the right way so you can easily get it, and they should teach you the styles that can be easy for you to beat, and they shouldn't be beating roughly. This was how I warned them. If you are watchful, sometimes you will see that when you are practicing together and I am sitting here, sometimes I send a child to tell them that they should not be playing as they are playing with you. I suffered to learn this drumming, but today if we are going to use suffering in training those who are coming to learn drumming, they will take it that we don't like them.
Truly, I myself, I was never beaten by anyone who was teaching me drumming, and it was because I was very serious about the drumming, and I learned it well. My senior brother Sheni is the only person who ever knocked me with a stick. That was after I left Nanton and came to Tamale here. It was Lun-Naa Iddrisu at Nanton who taught me drumming, and I stayed with him for a long time, and when I came here I was already beating the drum well. That was the time I came to stay with my brother Sheni. It was one time when I was beating guŋgɔŋ and following him: I was looking at something, and he was beating a drum, and he saw somebody and praised him with the drum and asked me to answer, and at that time I was looking at somewhere. And so he knocked me with the stick. That was the only time anyone knocked me since I began learning the drum. But as for abusing, he abused me all the time. If we were beating and he wanted me to beat the same as he was beating, if I was not able to do it, he would abuse me. Or whenever we were playing with other boys of my size, my brother would want me to play better than the other boys. He would say, “Why should you let these small, small boys play more than you? I want you to play more than them. And so don't allow them to play more than you!” As for that, he was always abusing me like that. But apart from him, no one ever knocked me. And I too, I never knocked anybody. If I am teaching you and you are not minding it, then it is over to you. My teaching will only benefit you and not me, and so if you don't mind me, it is over to you. That is how drumming is. And this is how some of the children find it difficult to learn to drumming, and they suffer before they learn it. And there are others who find it easy.
Apart from that, they will give birth to a child and give the child a drum, and it can happen that sometimes dwarfs will take the child in the bush and keep the child for some time. I have seen somebody like that. He was called Zakari. He died a few years ago. I was at Nanton when I knew him, and I think it will be more than forty years ago. He was at Zoggo, and he later went and stayed at Yendi. At that time we used to call him Zakari Kuɣa, because he was with the Kuɣa-Naa's drummers at Yendi. And he was a chief drummer at Yendi when he died. He was Namɔɣu-Wulana. He was not my size; he was older than me, and so I only grew up and knew him. My brother Mumuni knew him more than I, and he even joined Zakari to drum one time. When I was very small and we were at Voggo, Zakari came there. His mother who gave birth to him was a woman tindana at Singa, and he came to visit his mother, and there was a funeral at Voggo and he was called to come and beat the drum there. At that time I was too small to go to the funeral house, but Mumuni was beating drum very well, and when they were going to group the drummers to the funeral house, Zakari was watching Mumuni's wrist and the way he was holding the drum stick, and he said that if they are going to share the drummers, they should add Mumuni to his group. And Mumuni went and beat the drum with him.
This Zakari, everybody knew about him, and there wasn't any drummer in Dagbon who could sing more than him. It was dwarfs who took him to the bush, and the dwarfs kept him in the bush for about eight months' time. And his parents thought that he had died. And what we heard is that when Zakari was a small boy, he went with his father to the farm. At that time the child was too small to do any work. The father was weeding and the child was sitting under a tree. Any time the father needed something, he would tell the child to give it to him. It was a little while and the father called, “Zakari!” He didn't hear anything. Ah! The father straightened up and went under the tree where Zakari was sitting, and he couldn't find him. There was another farmer nearby, and he went and asked him and said that he couldn't find his child. By that time, the father thought that maybe Zakari had gone back to the house. And the other farmer sent his child to go and check and see whether Zakari was at home. And Zakari had not gone to the house.
In Dagbon here, if you go to the farm with your child, and the child is missing or caught by an animal in the bush, you inform people by beating a drum. You get a drummer to go around the areas and announce. You will go to the chief's house and tell the chief, and the chief will send a drummer out to be going around beating a drum and informing everybody that so-and-so's child is missing. If they beat the drum like that, people will gather round, and you will tell them, “This is what has happened, and so everybody should help.” They looked for Zakari for about four days, and they couldn't find him. They looked at all the paths and the ways from the farm to the house: they couldn't find him. And Zakari's father went to a soothsayer and asked, and the soothsayer said, “Yes. Zakari is not dead. He is still alive in this world. But to find him will be a big problem, and it will take a long time before anyone finds Zakari again.” And the father didn't believe it. He went to many soothsayers, and the same words came out of all of them. And the father stopped going to them. And he performed the funeral of Zakari.
The time Zakari got missing, Zakari's father had been sowing millet on the farm. When this millet grew and they were harvesting it, it was about eight months' time, and Zakari's father went to the farm and he saw Zakari sitting under the same tree he was sitting when he was missing. And it seemed as if Zakari had become a deaf person. And he was now afraid of people. And the father too was afraid of him. Zakari looked like somebody who had been buried and brought back again. And the father cried out in the farm, and people gathered round. And the father told them, “This is Zakari. I recognize him. But he cannot speak.”
Ah! They took Zakari to the house and called someone with medicine, and the man gave different medicines to Zakari and performed sacrifices. And the first thing to come out of Zakari's mouth was singing. He just continued singing. That was when he started singing. It was some time before the father was able to ask him, “Where have you been when you were lost?” And Zakari said he was taken into a hole. And the father asked him, “Where did you get food?” And Zakari replied that the dwarfs were giving him food. And the way old people talk about it, sometimes someone whom dwarfs take like that, if he is released, when he comes back to see human beings, he is afraid of them. And they will get elders who will help with medicines up to the time he is treated, and sometimes the fellow will talk all that he saw when he was away.
When Zakari was returned back by the dwarfs, there was no one who could beat a drum better than Zakari. As for that, I saw it myself; it's not that somebody told me. Zakari's tongue was a black tongue; any time he was singing, you would see the tongue just moving about in his mouth. All the drummers were afraid of him. When he was singing and you looked at the tongue, it looked like a snake's tongue. And he never became tired when he was beating a drum or singing. If he started singing from the morning up to the night, he could do it. If he started singing in the night, he could stand at one place and sing up to daybreak. And so his singing was not looking like somebody whom they teach how to sing. As he wouldn't sing and get tired, at that time, when he sang for people, if the people got tired and walked away, he would continue singing, and his singing would reach every corner. He would say that he is not satisfied with the song he is singing, and he would just be walking about singing. And so people watched him and got to know that, as for him, it isn't that somebody put him down and taught him how to sing. And so a drummer like that, his fellow drummers are afraid of him. When he came back from the bush, the way he was singing was different from the way other drummers sing. His voice was very sweet, and that time too, his voice could reach far, far away. And again, when he started to sing about a particular chief, he would sing it and would never become tired. If you are a drummer and you are going to sing about chieftaincy, when you sing, there is a point you will get tired and you will forget some parts of the singing. But as for him, if he was singing, he would be singing without tiredness, and he was singing with knowledge. That is how he was. He was at Zoggo when all this happened, and later he went to Yendi and ate a chieftaincy of drummers at Yendi, Namɔɣu-Wulana. And so that sort of drummer is different from the one who is born with the drumming or the one whom they teach. As for this talk, we have been hearing that there are people who have been taken by dwarfs. I don't know if it happens at your place, but in Dagbon here, we have been hearing all this. But I haven't heard of any other drummer like that. And so you can take it that it is something that is very strange, and you can put it in inside the book.
As for the child they teach, when the child grows and is getting more sense, say he is about fourteen or sixteen years old, the one who is holding the child will take the child to someone who is beating the medium-sized drum, the lundaa. That is the drum you always see at wedding houses: the one who holds the lundaa is the one who beats, and the other drums answer. And the one who beats lundaa will take the child and be teaching him to beat lundaa. He will start again with beating the grandfathers' names until the child knows it. If the small drummer doesn't want long talks, he will teach the child what we call Jɛŋgbari bɔbgu; it is the names of the chiefs of Yendi. Jɛŋgbari bɔbgu means “many mice,” but its real meaning is Naa Andani the elder, that is, Naa Andani Jɛŋgbarga. This is Naa Andani Jɛŋgbarga's name. His name is Andani, and so how they have called his name as Jɛŋgbari bɔbgu, then they call him Naa Andani Jɛŋgbarga.
Let me add you salt. I will show you what is under this name. Mice have gathered and made one mouth, and they are making bangles. We have some bangles like bells that we used to put around the neck. And the mice said they would put the bangles on the cat, because he has been coming to catch them. You know how a cat moves, very slowly; nobody hears it. And so the mice wanted to make the bangles so that when the cat was coming, they would hear. And one of them asked, “What we are making, who can take it and go and put on the cat?” And one of them asked again, “Who is even going to call the cat to come?” Have you heard? If many mice gather and they are making bangles, if the cat comes, will they still sit down to make the bangles? They will run away. That is the meaning of Jɛŋgbari bɔbgu. It is a proverb for Naa Andani Jɛŋgbarga. It shows that if people gather and they want to do something to him, when he comes, they will all run away. This is Naa Andani Jɛŋgbarga's name; I told you that the chiefs call names and abuse one another. My elders who taught me drumming showed me the meaning, but they didn't tell what happened and he called himself with that name. Many mice have gathered and they are preparing bells: who is going to put the bells on the cat? That is the sense inside it. This proverb, truly, I think that anywhere, everybody will understand it or know something about it, because of the way human beings are and how God created us.
But this Jɛŋgbari bɔbgu, how they beat it, it is the names of the chiefs of Yendi. That is how it is. As the chiefs have many names in the form of proverbs, they all have some sense inside them. The one teaching the child will call all the names of the chiefs of Yendi and take him and come out to the present. And so when the child is about sixteen and he starts learning the lundaa, that is the time he will be going around, and asking, and they will be teaching him. At that time, what he learns and knows, he won't forget it again.
How it is when a Dagbana is learning how to beat the drum: when the small drummer finishes learning the chiefs of Yendi, if it is that he wants to go to any place and they will know he is a drummer, and if it is that the small drummer doesn't want to go and be meeting other small drummers who can beat more than him, then he will let the one or the ones teaching him to take him and start him on the chiefs of the other towns. He will let them start him with the Savelugu chiefs who have died, and they will take him up to the present chief who is alive. If he wants, he will let them take the Mion chiefs, and they will teach him all the names of the dead chiefs of Mion, and he will learn how to beat all their names up to the present chief. He can take Karaga too, and beat it up to the end. If he wants he can take Kumbungu and beat it up till now. When he beats like that and knows, if it is that they will be meeting at a gathering place and beating drums, and they will be giving the lead to one another, it is there that the small drummers will show their knowledge.
At the drumming place, there will be someone who can beat and the beating is very sweet, but the fellow has not asked more. When the small drummer meets him there, the small drummer will be struggling and will be following him to beat Yendi. If they finish Yendi, maybe the fellow will take Kumbungu and go, and the small drummer will be following him. And the fellow will finish calling Kumbungu and will come to take Savelugu. Maybe that fellow only knows a small part of Savelugu and he can only count about ten of the dead chiefs: he will finish Savelugu and go to take Mion, and the small drummer they have taught will still be in Savelugu. The small drummer will finish Savelugu and go and take Tolon. At that time the fellow who has not asked does not know anything else. His drumming is weak. And the other one, the small drummer, his drumming will go forward. That is some of the drumming he has learned. What he has learned, maybe there is also Naa Zanjina's beating in his hand. And he will beat Naa Zanjina and come and take it up to the present. And so this is what I have been telling you when I call the names of the chiefs. You cannot talk about drumming and not call the names of the chiefs. If you are going to talk about drumming in Dagbon, you have to call the names of the chiefs, because the chiefs and the drummers are one.
As the small drummer has learned all this, he has learned to sing it, and he has learned to beat it with his hand. And these two things are different. Someone may learn the singing but not the beating; if someone beats it for him, he won't know what song the fellow was beating. If you learn how to sing and you don't learn how to beat, when they beat, sometimes you will not understand. But someone who has learned both can be singing and forget the name of a chief, and someone will beat a drum and remind him. Someone who has learned how to beat the drum and also learned how to sing, we call him lum maŋli, that he is a real drummer. He knows all. When he is beating and someone is singing, he hears it; when he is singing and someone beats and reminds him, he understands. If you want to learn drumming and you don't know all this, you are not a drummer.
And so from sixteen getting to eighteen years, that is the time the small drummer will be learning more. And at the same time, that is the age when he will learn and not forget. If not at that age, if he learns the songs when he is very small, and he doesn't follow it at that age, when he grows up, he will forget all of it. When he was small and he was beating, he was only beating for his hand to get used to it. And when he was small and he was singing, he was only singing to be used to it. But from sixteen years and up, anything he wants to learn, he will learn it well. The beating will not disturb him. And as he knows how to sing and beat at the same time, then we call him a real drummer. But the one who knows only the songs or knows only the beating, as he doesn't know all, we call him one-sided.
By that time too, if a small drummer is singing, his voice will change, and if he continues singing, his throat will open. On the part of singing, if a child is just growing up and he doesn't yet know anything about sex, his singing is very sweet: when he is singing, there is no dirt in the throat, and he won't find it difficult to sing. But when he grows up, there is a point when his voice starts to change, and he will find it difficult. If he reaches that point and refuses to sing again, then that is all: he won't be able to sing again. He has to continue singing little by little, and then his voice will become open again. If not that, his voice will decrease, and he will find it difficult to sing. And someone will be shy at that point, and he will grow and know all the songs, but he won't be able to sing them. If he stops singing at that time, he won't sing well again.
How singing is, the way you will hear somebody's voice and say it is sweet, it is just from the way the voice is coming. It will come clearly so that you will be hearing it, and when it gets into you, you will feel it. How we all sing, there are some people who sing, and they know the songs, too, but they won't sing and you will have interest in the song. They know it, but the singing is not sweet. And so the sweetness of singing comes from how the voice is going to come out with the words. As for us here, this is what we want: if you are singing, your voice must be clear for people to hear you very well, so that they will hear the songs you are singing. Those who will be listening to the song you are singing, they will catch it. And the way you sing, too, it should match with the thing you are beating. You shouldn't sing above the playing. If you are singing and the voice is too loud above the playing, then people won't enjoy the playing. This is the way it is standing. The one who has a very high voice, or loud voice, as for him, every time he is singing, if you are far away from where he is, you can hear him. But the one who sings very low, or quietly, if you don't get closer to him, you can't hear him. He is also a singer, and his voice is good, but you have to go near to him. This is the way it is. Everybody has the way of his voice. You will hear different singers, and all their voices are different. I will give you an example, and maybe sometimes you have also been seeing it. It can happen that you will go to some place and you are doing something, and somebody will talking behind you, and his voice alone will let you turn to your back to see who is talking. And somebody will be talking and you won't mind to turn to see who is talking. Or am I telling lies? That is how singing is. The one whose voice is clear, when he sings, everybody will hear him. So this is where the sweetness comes from.
And all this, drummers search for it. Someone will be singing and it will sound like a sheep: “Baa-aa!” Someone whose voice is not sweet, we call it like that: “He sings like a sheep.” Such a person will stand up and search for the truth, and he will be carrying on and carrying on with the songs, and it will make his voice to become sweet. His voice will become clear because of the truth in the singing. And apart from that, you know, if you are holding something, you want the way and means so that it will increase. If you want to be singing, and you want your voice to be nice, Dagbamba have medicines. There are some with the maalams, and there are some with the old drummers. If you want the one from the old drummers, you can go to an old drummer who has it and tell him the way you want your voice to be. He will give you the medicine, and you will be eating it and singing. And if you want it from the maalams, you will tell the maalams to give you something to make your throat clear, and they will help you. They will be doing the writings for you, and you will be drinking. And all that, you have to search for it. And at that time, the way you want to be singing, if God agrees, it will do for you. If you come into the public, and you are talking or singing, you will see the voice going into everyone's ears, and it makes them sweet. That is its way.
And again, I can say that there are many drummers who know how to beat, but truly, it is not all drummers who can sing nicely. There will be someone who will be beating lundaa and praising people, but he cannot sing. As he knows people, his heart has known people but the mouth cannot sing it. Such a person, we call him a drummer, and we call him “It's in his heart; it's not in his mouth.” He will have the respect of his drumming. He can see someone going and say, “That fellow: his father's house is this; his mother's house is that,” and others will sing it for him. But the one who doesn't know how to beat the drum, as for him, we don't count him in drumming. If you are in drumming and you cannot beat lundaa unless just knocking it, and you cannot sing either, that is why we don't count you as a drummer. You don't know about the drum you are holding, and you can't do what drummers can do. Truly, to learn drumming, there are a lot of problems, and so these are some of the things in our drumming.
Sometimes someone will be brought forth in a drumming family and he will grow up and will not know how to beat the drum. He will be following them to places where they play, and they will show him, and he won't know it. His heart is not in the drumming. As the heart is not there, the arm is also not in it. As the arm is not there, any time he wants to beat, he will only be knocking it Gau-gau-gau. We call such a drummer N yab' be sambandi, that is, “my grandfather is outside.” We call him that because a drummer is called “grandfather” and because he doesn't know anything about drumming. Such a drummer who is beating a drum like that, we don't count him in drumming. It's not that you won't cut his share: if you the proper drummers are in the chief's hall, doing something, and he is holding a drum outside, then you will tell yourselves, “Oh, my grandfather is outside; we shouldn't forget about him. We should give him something.” I told you that someone can receive a drum by force from his mother's house, and he won't know how to beat it. And someone whose heart is not inside the drumming is also like that. If such drummers follow us to someplace, we joke with them. But whatever we are doing on the part of drumming, when we get, we still have to say, “My grandfather is also sitting outside.”
And so such drummers are there, and we don't regard their drumming. He is holding a drum but he is not a proper drummer: when they are asking for drummers, they won't go and look for him. When you tell him to beat a drum by himself, he can't beat; unless a group is beating before he can come and join. As I am sitting, any place where Dagbamba are, if I alone come out, I can take my one drum and beat for everybody. But there is someone who can't beat lundaa. He doesn't know how to sing. How is he going to beat alone? He is a drummer, but unless others are beating before he can also beat. Another name for him is luŋ kpahara, drum knocker, because if they don't come to beat, as for him, he can't beat. For example, how you have come and learned this drumming from me, if you take a drum now, you can start any beating. But when you are at your home town with those who are following you, if you yourself don't put a drum into your armpit, can the others beat? Can they beat alone? They cannot. So that is it: unless they hear the way you beat before they can also follow you and be hitting the drum. But are they not drummers? They are drummers, but they are outside the door and knocking, and that is where they are standing in the drumming. The drum is only lying down in front of them. And such drummers, we have them here.
And so a small drummer who wants his drumming to go forward, he will continue learning, and he will learn more of the songs and the beating. Learning is from the heart. And again, learning is within the heart. I told you that you have to be patient to learn drumming. It takes time. How a small drummer will be learning, there will be some beating he will beat, and he himself won't be enjoying it. It means that the particular beating is not yet seated in his heart. Many people used to face this kind of thing on the part of learning some of the beating. When it comes like that, what you will do is that you always try to beat that particular beating. Unless you follow it before you will become used to it. If you continue beating it and beating it like that, you will see that it goes into your head, and goes into your heart. Your ears will hear it, and your heart too will catch it. We drummers who are beating drums, how they started teaching us, this is the way it is. You will follow the one teaching you. If you want, you can take a drum alone and start beating it like that, to let your ears and your heart take it. It is the heart that does the work, and the ears too will be listening and see whether it is falling. Some drummers do that. But if you are not used to the beating, if you are alone somewhere, any time you are beating it, the way you know it is the way you will beat it; as you are not used to it yet, and you have moved away alone, anytime you will be beating it, whatever happens, you won't enjoy it. Anytime you will beat it, you will come to pass a different place, because it is not yet seated in your heart. And it is not yet seated in your ears too. And so if the one teaching you is around, then you will follow him. As you are following him like that, it is better. That is how it is.
And so a small drummer who is learning, or any drummer, any time you put a drum in your armpit and you are going to beat it, you will always put your ear to the sound of the drum. If you hear it, you will look at your wrist too, the way your wrist is moving with the stick on the drum, and if you see that the sound of the drum is not coming, or it is not correct to the hearing of your ears, then you will know how to adjust yourself. Then when you hear it clearly, you will see that you are beating it all right. And so as for us, the way we beat the drums, any time you are beating, all your mind should be inside the beating. If you don't think inside the beating, then you will spoil the music. The one dancing, he himself won't enjoy the beating you are beating. If you are more than twenty drummers and you start beating, everybody has a way of thinking: when you are beating, each and everyone is putting his mind on the beating he is beating, and thinking about it, in order to do it and it will be falling nicely. If you all don't put your mind on the drum, and all your thinking will match, then the beating doesn't fall, and those who will be dancing too, their dancing will not fall. So the way we beat, we beat with thinking. That is how we beat. At that time, if the sound of the drum is not coming correctly, sometimes it comes from the skin you used to sew the drum. I told you that you can use a skin to sew your drum, and your drum doesn't want that skin. If your drum is not crying well, whatever happens, you won't enjoy it. But apart from that, the time you are beating, maybe your heart is not inside, and you are not putting your mind on the beating. If your heart is not sitting down, or your heart is not on the drum, and you are beating it, you will not enjoy it. The fault is coming from your heart. If your heart is not sweet, even if you take a good thing, it will turn to be a bad thing. It is white heart that does work. That is why I say that learning is in the heart. That is the way it is.
If the small drummer has a heart that can learn, and he continues learning like that, by the time he reaches twenty-one or twenty-two years, he will know much about Naa Zanjina and the chiefs following him, and he can use his knowledge for the Samban' luŋa, and he will be someone who is able to beat Samban' luŋa at the chief's house. And if his heart wants, he will know it but will not take it to beat Samban' luŋa. Someone may not beat Samban' luŋa but will be able to teach someone to beat it. It is all part of drumming. Someone may know the Samban' luŋa but he himself will not beat it because maybe his voice is not sweet. He doesn't want to go in front of people and sing and they will say that his voice is not sweet. And there is someone again who will open his mouth to sing and will not know how to put down the song so that it will fall well. Such a fellow knows that he knows about the talks of drumming, but he doesn't want to sing. And so not everyone who learns the Samban' luŋa will take it to beat. And these differences, they are all inside drumming. At the age of about twenty-two, if a child knows that he can beat and sing, maybe he will also like to go outside and people will know that he can play. He will want to go to a town and see a chief who will trust him and let him sit outside and beat the Samban' luŋa. And someone too will know all this and he will not care. He can know everything about drumming, but he will not go to the chief's house to play. Everyone learns drumming with what his own heart wants.
And so a small drummer who has learned, and he wants to grow in the drumming, he will go around to towns to be learning more. It isn't only in your town that you learn drumming. As for learning your grandfathers, you will learn that one with somebody who is of the same family as you. But as for the lundaa, and on the part of your asking, you don't learn only in your town. Those drumming in your town, their drumming may not be much. In Dagbon here, we have different family lines of drummers. There are some people who don't know how to beat more on the drum, but they are drummers. And there are others too who beat the drum, but the sound is not sweet. You see Sagnerigu: there are drummers there, but their drumming is not sweet. You see Tampion: the drummers there don't give the best drumming. It is the same with Kanvili. We are all drummers and we are the same, but we are many and we are not equal. The reason is that we come from different lines, and every drummer has got his door into drumming. As you see us beating drums all the time, you can see that some beat differently from others, and some beat better than others.
And so any small drummer who wants to be play well, he has to go round and find those who are learned in drumming to be teaching him. If he does that, he will learn more, and what he learns too, it will be better. Let's say that what you are getting in you town, you have finished getting it. You can hear maybe that there is a very good drummer at Karaga. You will go there. If you finish and you hear that there is a good drummer at Savelugu, you can go to him, and ask again. He will teach you. When you go, you will be staying in his house. He is not charging you, but as you are learning, everyday when he is going to the farm, you will go with him. Every work of his, you will do it with him. If you get up and you go to someplace to beat and you are given money, the money is not for you. You will come and put it down in front of him. If he gives you back threepence, you will say, “God should cover Bizuŋ's anus,” and you get up. It is because you want something from him that you are giving the money to him.
When you know to some extent, sometimes he may decide to teach you about a chief, and before he will teach you this chief, they have to sacrifice an animal and remove blood. Sometimes this removing of blood will be a sheep. He won't hide it from you; he will tell you. And you are the one who will have to get the animal to remove blood, that is, to sacrifice. If you don't remove the blood, and he takes the talk of that chief and teaches you, you will get trouble. If you don't get trouble, he will get trouble. And so if you don't remove the blood, sometimes the one teaching you will remove it. And sometimes, it comes to be a white cock. There are other chiefs, before he teaches you, they will remove the blood of a white dove. All these talks, if you come to meet any of them and the drummer tells you, you will do it. If you don't, you will lose; but when you do it, you will see that your drumming will go forward again.
When you have learned from him the extent you want, and there is another drummer somewhere, you can go to him, and ask again. You will do as if you don't know anything, and you will start again. You want to get his wisdom and add it to what you have learned. There is someone who will know the names of only two chiefs, someone who will know the names of only three chiefs, someone who will know the names of four chiefs. Maybe the one you went to, he only knew two chiefs, and he taught you. What he taught you, you will take it and be using it in your drumming. And someone who knows four chiefs, you will go to him and do as if you don't know. At that time, he will be teaching you. What they have taught you and you knew, when he teaches you that, he had added to you. And what you didn't know, when he teaches you, he has added you more. But if you say, “I have already known it; I already know”: that will not give a human being wisdom. Drumming is: “I don't know.” The one who knows, he will teach you. And the one who doesn't know, he will teach you to the end of his strength.
There is someone who will learn how to drum, and he will only be sitting down and teaching. If it is lundaa he has learned, he will be sitting down. He will only take up his drum when someone comes to him. If you go to him, he will put his drum under his armpit and you will also put yours, and he will be beating and you will be following him. We teach songs with the mouth, but the beating of the lundaa, the medium-sized drum, the lundaa is often leading when we beat our dances, and so we don't show the beating of the lundaa with the mouth. As for the lundaa, when someone is going to show how to beat it, he will put it under his armpit. What he beats, you beat it. When he beats the name of a chief and you don't understand, he will open his mouth and say, “This is the name of the chief I have beaten.” And so lundaa is taught with the hand and the mouth, but I think the teaching with the hand is more than the mouth. Maybe you know some of the names; the one teaching you will not teach those with the mouth. He will only use the drumstick, and it is the stick in his hand he will be using to teach you, and you will also be knowing it. If God agrees, you will finish knowing it. And you will go somewhere and ask again.
And truly, there are some small drummers who will learn to their extent, and they will not go and sit with elder drummers. They will only use their sense to be drumming. And what I want to tell you is that inside drumming, the one who asks and the one who does not ask, they are not equal. The one who will go and learn, and the one who doesn't go to learn but he only uses his sense to beat, they are not equal. If they don't teach you, if you are someone who is very sensible, you can use your sense to beat the drum. Somebody will be playing or beating with sense, and he knows how it will fall nicely, but as he is only beating with sense, they didn't teach him, and his drumming does not go far. You see the people beating Baamaaya. They are beating and using their sense to beat it. Even to beat the guŋgɔŋ, no one ever taught them to beat the guŋgɔŋ. They are not drummers, but they are using guŋgɔŋ and drum to beat Baamaaya. If you are not a drummer and you want to beat their dance, you will go to enter them and they will show you how to beat their drumming. But we who are the real drummers, we can just go and watch their playing and get it. Truly, I myself only listened to the sound of their drums, and I can beat it more than they. I didn't learn it, but if I am going to beat with them face to face, I will beat it better. And so we drummers can beat their dance, but they can never even try to beat ours if they don't come to learn it. As we didn't teach them how to beat our beating, can they beat it? They can't. Drumming is not their work; they are only learning drumming to beat Baamaaya, and as they are learning it, it is their sense they use to beat the drum, and no one is teaching them. But as we have sat with them or watched them to know their beating, we can do it. And the reason why someone like me doesn't go to them to learn it is that I was taught how to drum. We drummers who were taught how to beat, we can take our sense and get their beating. Even it was we drummers who brought Baamaaya, and it moved from us to them, and now it has changed. When I was growing up in the village, I was beating Baamaaya. And so we know the meaning of Baamaaya more than they know it. I have showed you the real meaning of Baamaaya, but if you go and ask those who are beating it now, they won't know it. And so their way of drumming, you can't compare it to our drumming.
This is why I'm saying that the one beating with sense and the one they have taught cannot be the same. The one they teach is better than the one who is only using his own sense to beat. In our drumming, there are many people using sense to beat the drum, and someone like that can continue beating for so long. If someone is beating with sense, he never becomes tired, because the sense is not finishing from him. But it has no meaning. There is nothing under it. Who taught him to do that? Whose name is he beating? The one they teach, if he is going to beat, he will beat how they have taught him. As for knowledge, every knowledge is supposed to have a father. If a time comes and they ask you, “Who taught you this?”, then you will be able to say that “My father showed me.” Inside your knowledge, you have a father for it. And so inside your knowledge, you have something to say: any time you are doing work, and you come to face some difficulties, you have a way to sit down and swear. You will say, “You such-and-such a person, unless you are not the one who taught me this, now that I am going to do this work and I'm finding difficulty inside it, unless of course, it's a lie, that you weren't the one who taught me.” At that time you have sworn on him, the father of your knowledge. And at that time, the work you are doing and you were finding difficulty inside it, you will see that it will get up and stand. That is its way. As for the one who asks, he has a way of swearing, but the one who doesn't ask has nobody to swear on.
Somebody who uses his sense, his beating always goes here and here, goes here and here. “Go here and here, go here and here”: who is the father of that? He is using his sense to beat. No one taught him. And so what will he know? Will he know more about it? If someone asks him about his beating, can he answer? How our drumming is, if they don't teach you, you just can't take your sense to know what something is. And so the one with sense is not the same as the one they have taught. What I have taught you, if you beat all of it and come to the end, can you go farther? Maybe you can use your sense and beat what you know in a very nice way, but can you use your sense to beat another one? And so the one with sense, his drumming will only be nice if they have taught him and he has added his sense. If you learn more, and you have gone around and added to what I have taught you, your drumming will extend. And so the one they teach is better than the one who is using sense. And if they teach you something and you know you can use your sense to beat it better, you can do that. They have taught you and you have added your sense: it will be better than the one who is only using his sense to do everything.
And here is an example. As you have been here with us, we know that you have sense. Why is it that when you came, you didn't use your sense to pick up a drum and beat it with your sense? You rather followed us to teach you. Let's say that there were two of you who came, and you yourself said that if you come you will let them teach you; and the other one said he has got sense, and as he has come he is going to use his sense to do what you are going to do, and he is just going to watch the drummers and pick it up like that. And you went and you bought a drum and asked them to teach you; and they taught you how to beat. And you have sense, too, but you only wanted them to teach you. And the other one refused and said that they would not teach him. Your beating and his beating: which one will be good? Yours will be better. And so some people beat with sense, but sense without learning is not nice. The one they teach is better than the one who is using his sense. Whatever happens, if they teach someone how to beat, the one who hasn't been taught will one day follow him. Someone who understands drumming very well, when he sees someone using his sense to beat, he will see that the fellow is only using his sense to beat but that he is not beating and following the ways of drumming.
And so because of all this, a drummer will always be going round and asking. Drumming has no end, and nobody learns all of it. Everybody will only learn to his extent. Even on the part of learning how to beat a drum, it is not all types of drum you will beat. The drums we beat have different sizes, and they cry according to how the size is. And we beat the different drums for different types of play. Have you seen the lundaa and the lumbila? The lumbila is “small drum.” Lumbila is shorter than lundaa. I told you that after the lumbila, we have one which is even smaller, and we call it lunnyiriŋga. When a child is learning how to beat the drum, he starts with the smallest one, and he comes to take the lumbila. After he grows to be about fourteen or sixteen years old, we sew a lundaa and give to him. Lundaa is the medium-sized drum, and it has some different sizes, too. And the child will be beating. When he beats for some time and we know that he is getting what we want him to know, then we let him take a longer lundaa. He can beat that one until he grows up and marries and brings forth children, and when his heart wants, he can buy a medium-sized lundɔɣu. The lundɔɣu is the biggest of the drums, and the length is like my arm, but it also has different sizes. Its sound is like the guŋgɔŋ, but it does not sound as loud as the guŋgɔŋ. When a drummer takes a lundɔɣu, he will take that one and be beating, and he will not change again unless maybe he becomes a chief of drummers.
How we beat the different drums, it isn't that we have put it down that this or that drum will be the one to lead. If we are beating dances, the drummers will have different types of drums, and maybe two or three of them will be beating and leading. If you look inside it at a gathering like a wedding house, the one beating lundaa will often lead and sing when we play for people to dance. If it is Baamaaya or Takai or Tɔra or Jɛra, most of the time you will see the drummers beating lumbila. And how the lundɔɣu is, it is very good for praising. But any of them, if you know how to beat a drum, you can use any drum to praise people. Someone who becomes chief of drummers, he beats the lundɔɣu. Apart from the lundɔɣu, we have the lundɔ' mahili: it is bigger than lundaa; it is like the lundɔɣu but its sound is not as much as the lundɔɣu. The drum my brother Sumani gave you and you are always using it now, formerly it was lundɔɣu, and I cut the ends to make it lundɔ' mahili. And again, there is another one which is a very big drum, lun titali. It is the biggest lundɔɣu. When you go to a very old drummer's house, that is the type you will see hanging in the hall. Sometimes some of them put it in a bag and hang it. The chiefs of drummers, like Namo-Naa, Palo-Naa, Nanton Maachɛndi, you will see this lun titali hanging in their halls.
And so when the drummer was a small child and they gave him the giŋgaɣinyɔɣu, he was beating it up to the time he threw it away. The child following behind him, they will make the same type of giŋgaɣinyɔɣu for him, and he will pick it up. It is not every child who is given that, and it is not necessary that a child should try to beat it before he will learn. If the child wants, he will beat it, and if he does not want, he will not beat it. Sometimes the very small drum his brother was using, that will be the first drum for the child. And so the one who was growing up and he was beating lumbila and came to beat lundaa, as he is coming up, he can beat both. If he wants, he will continue and take the drum that is bigger than lundaa, that is, the lundɔɣu. It is all from what his heart wants. As I am sitting down, I can beat the lumbila and the lundaa. If I take a drum that is bigger than the two I am using now, I can beat it, but I won't feel like beating it. I learned lumbila and lundaa and guŋgɔŋ. Sometimes a child will grow up to be about twenty years, and he will beat lumbila and stop at that point. If he wants to learn lundaa too, he will learn and stop. You see that small drummer Issa, the one who has just come from Nanton and has been going to beat with us: you can see how strong he is because he is not even up to twenty years, and he is trying to beat lundɔɣu. All this is from what a child wants, or how the body of the child is. Someone who comes to learn lundɔɣu very well, any time he comes back to beat lundaa or lumbila, he will not enjoy the sound. He is used to the sound of the lundɔɣu.
And so how lundɔɣu is, if you are used to it and you want to beat lundaa again, you will not find it easy. But before when you wanted to beat lundɔɣu, you had to be used to the lundaa; otherwise you could not beat the lundɔɣu. And all this is from the starting. But as for lundaa, if you didn't learn lundaa from the beginning, you cannot beat it. It's not that you cannot beat the drum. You can beat it, but it will not be nice. You yourself won't enjoy it. What you were making your mind to beat with the lundɔɣu, when you take lundaa, you cannot beat it like that. It is just like someone who is used to beating guŋgɔŋ and he wants to put down the guŋgɔŋ and beat a drum. You know that the mouth of the guŋgɔŋ is very wide, and if he picks up a drum to beat it, he will break it because it is too small for him. And as lundɔɣu is very much bigger than lundaa, if you are used to lundɔɣu and you want to beat the lundaa, it will seem to be something very small in your hand. You won't regard it. And if you are someone who beats lundaa, if you take lundɔɣu, you will find it very heavy, and it will be difficult for you. And so to know all the drums, you have to learn them from the beginning so that you can know how to beat all. Otherwise, if you continue beating only one, it will come to a time when you cannot beat the others. They are different. We drummers, some of us say that to beat the lundɔɣu is easier than the others because if you beat it you won't become tired. The lundɔɣu is heavy, and the stick is also heavy; the lundɔɣu itself is heavier than lundaa, and so its everything is equal to its size. But as for lundɔɣu, if you just put it in your armpit and you beat, it will sound and the sound will go everywhere. As for lundaa, it boils your body when you are going to beat it. If you don't tighten yourself, it won't sound the way you want. But lundɔɣu, if you just put your arm on the strings coolly, you will be beating, and your body will be cool. And lumbila is even more difficult. To beat lumbila, you have to be pressing it in your armpit. A drummer who is used to lundɔɣu, and he is not strong again, he won't go near lumbila. Even to beat lundaa, he has to inflate himself, or it will be hard for him. And these are some of the differences in drumming and the way every drummer learns it.
And so if you follow the elders of drumming and you learn more inside the drumming, if you also think you will be taking it to the public and be beating, it is up to you. If they will be teaching you the songs and you will sing, then you will be singing. Any time you go someplace to play, you will sing. If you don't feel shy with your voice, you will be going outside with your singing. There is someone who would like to sing but it will be disturbing him, and you'll see that his face will be squeezing and it will look as if he's going to cry. Someone will sing and squeeze his face, and you will see people laughing. They are not laughing at his face; as they are laughing, it is because he is speaking the truth without any mistake, and it is sweet. And there is someone else who will be singing and his face will look as if he is laughing. He will be singing with a very nice voice, and as he is singing, there is laughter in it, and people will be laughing. And it is the same as with beating of drums, too. Someone will be beating and you will see his face squeeze. It is all from the learning and the way your heart is. If you are beating and your face looks as if it is squeezed, it comes from the time you learned it. If you are learning it with laughter, it is the laughter you are going to be beating. Even if you have squeezed your face a little, it is laughter that is coming out. But if you learn it with squeezing your face, the laughter cannot come the way your heart wants it. That is how learning of the drum is.
I want you to be watchful, even not inside drumming alone. There are some people: to laugh, they always find it difficult. Even for such a person to sit down and converse with people is difficult, unless somebody will talk and ask him something. As for such a person, he will just be sitting down, and he will always be holding himself tightly. If somebody like that is going to be a singer, when he is singing, you won't see his face open freely. And the one who will sing and laugh, even if he is not singing and he is only sitting down, any small thing you will do will make him to laugh. If such a person happens to be a singer, and he knows the singing, and he knows the meaning of the song, when he is singing it, the singing goes into him. And when he is singing, then people will start to give him gifts. As they are giving him the gifts, it will be sweet to him, and the words he is singing in the song, it is also be making him sweet, and he is also somebody who laughs already. Some drummers are like that. As I myself am sitting, when I am beating a drum, it comes in two ways. Sometimes I will beat, and you will see my face standing still. At other times you will see me smiling and laughing. There is no fault. The time you will see my face tighten, then I really want the drum to talk what I want it to talk. And the time you see me smiling too, it means the beating is coming all right for me, and I am enjoying whoever is dancing, or whoever is paying attention to what I am beating. And so the two of them are the same, because it is not everyday when what your heart wants will be coming through what you are beating in the drum. If you are getting what you want to come inside the drum, you still want it to come more, so you can be serious, or you can be laughing. That is what we want, and your heart will be coming to the drum like that. Somebody like my senior brother Mumuni sitting down, if you see him, you will think he is not somebody who will play with anything. He is very quiet, and someone might see him and think he has a bad character. But if he puts drum under his armpit, and he's in a gathering, and he's singing, you will see that the drumming will go into his body. You will see him moving in the gathering with the drum, and singing, and you won't recognize him again. So that is the way we drummers are: everybody and the way he started. That is why I told you that Dagbamba say that a person who doesn't talk is not a fool, and someone who talks a lot is not a wise person. And this talk, it looks like that.
And truly, if you are a small drummer and you are going around to older drummers, you will learn beating and singing to your extent. Any drummer you go to, he will teach you to his extent. And when you learn all this from the one you've gone to, after learning it, there is no charge. In our drumming way, no one will charge you. The only charge is what your heart tells you to pay him. As you have learned from him, you will know what you are going to give him and his heart will be cool. Someone can get a white gown; and get jɛnjɛmi, our local trousers, and add; and get a white hat and add. If you have the means, you will buy sandals and add. And you will say, “Get this and be covering cold.” And the old drummer will say, “God should help you in your drumming.” That is all. In drumming, there is no charge. If you go to somewhere and you beat and get something, you can take it and go back and give it to the one who taught you. If you go to beat Samban' luŋa or any other serious drumming, sometimes maybe they will put three or four gowns on you. If you receive them and come home, you can take some and go and give to the one who taught you. But he is not the one who charged you. It isn't because he charged you that you have given him. In our drumming way, the one teaching does not charge. It is you the one learning who charges yourself for him. It is because you know that what he has taught you is going to benefit you, and so when you get something, it is good you give some to him, too. That is how drumming is.
If you are a small drummer and you are learning how to play from an old drummer, if you want to gain, this is what you have to do to the old drummer. If you do that, you will get the benefit of your drumming, and you will even get some benefits you were not expecting to get. It can sometimes happen that giving your teacher gifts can bring out a woman. If he has a daughter, he can give her to you. When he gives you a woman, at that time the drumming will expand because maybe you and this woman will make a family. And so to learn drumming, the time you are learning it, you won't know the benefits you will get in a time to come. And so drumming is a patient thing, and you have to use patience to get it. It isn't a forced thing. If you want to learn it in a hurry, you won't know it. You have to have patience and go slowly. At that time, whatever they teach you, you can catch it. If God agrees, you will follow its ways and you will get those who will teach you well. There is someone who can get up and learn drumming from many people. And someone will get up and learn it from one person. Sometimes this one person will sit down, and his wisdom will be more than the wisdom of ten people. And it shows that he has learned it from many people too. And so it is good when you say you are going to learn drumming, you learn it well. If you learn much, it means you have learned it from many people. Or if the one who taught you knows much, and you also learn much from him, it means that you have learned it from many people.
And how teaching is, Dagbamba have their proverbs, and old people say: if you say you don't want trouble and a trouble-maker comes to meet you, whatever happens, he will cause you trouble. Teaching is like that. We Dagbamba say again that the one who asks is the person who makes the one he asks to know more. If you are sitting down and you didn't ask, and the time comes when asking is also coming, it is by force that you will go and find out. You don't want somebody to come and ask you something, and you will tell that fellow that you don't know it. And it separates again, because maybe the thing you asked and learned, nobody has come to ask you about it, and you won't go to ask and know more again. But if somebody asks you, he has reminded you, and you will say, “Oh, I have to try again.” You will also go and find out from your elders, and at that time you will see that your knowledge is widening. How you have come to me and asked, I don't want to be ashamed, and I don't want lies, so I also have to be going around and learning more. That is the meaning of the proverb that if a trouble-maker comes to meet you, he will cause you trouble. So in this case, you are the trouble-maker, but I don't actually mean that you are causing trouble. Anyone who is a learned person wants the one who asks. This is what we want, because somebody who teaches also learns. That is how teaching is, and that is how the learning of the drum and the ways of drumming come about. And what I have talked today, the children we give birth to, this is how they grow up and learn drumming. And that is how it is. And tomorrow I will tell you how I learned drumming, the places where I have gone to learn drumming and the suffering I suffered. I will tell you all that, and it will be wonderful.