Origins of the Damba festival from Naa Zanjina; the work of drummers in the Damba Festival; the Somo Damba; the Chiefs' Damba; how villagers celebrate the Damba Festival; the Damba Biɛlikulsi; Namo-Naa's role in the Damba Festival
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Damba is the month of white heart for all Dagbamba.
We Dagbamba don't respect any festival more than the Damba Festival.
Damba is our big thing, and that is the respect of Damba.
I think that no one will ever be more happy than on the day your wife gives birth to a child, and you also perform the naming.
Naa Zanjina lit a lantern and opened the eyes of Dagbamba.
Whatever we are doing in a traditional or custom way, it is Naa Zanjina who brought it.
When Naa Zanjina received the chieftaincy, we were in darkness.
It was Naa Zanjina who opened the eyes of Dagbon.
Dances can be compared to each other, and you may think that they are the same, but they are not the same.
On the day of the Damba, no one quarrels with the wife.
Everyone should hold his own problem.
They sing that today is the day to visit the chief, and they will go and visit the chief.
They sing that if you find your trouble, it is not the chief who has found it for you; your trouble is for you, so you should not hand it to anyone.
A human being is bad, but God is not bad.
A chief thief has taken a rich man's thing and turned around to put it at the rich man's sleeping place.
Every person has got the dance he likes to dance.
That is the day when you will see whether Dagbon is Dagbon, or Dagbon is not Dagbon.
“How is our good luck?”
For a villager to enjoy a festival, it means that he ate and was satisfied.
At the Damba Festival, you say you should have a long life to meet again.
Even a useless Dagbana, when he is crying, he is crying for the Damba Festival.
If somebody is praying to God, he will pray, “May God bless me to live up to the next Damba Festival.”
Our Dagbon has no animal which has more respect than a horse.
A horse is war.
If there is a war and there is no horse, then the war is a weak war.
If a drummer is not there, then chieftaincy is also not there.
In Dagbon here, if you have money and you don't have a horse, they don't respect you. They give more respect to the horse than the money.
Where the chief sits and receives people, that is the same room where the horse stays.
You will buy a horse to be knocking your chest and showing yourself.
I will not know a person and let him know me again.
A wind is blowing clay pots; gourd calabashes should not make themselves proud.
Never trust a human being.
If you trust a human being, you are lying down naked.
A person separated in a quarrel, his shouting is boasting.
As it has come now, everyone is living where he is living.
Chieftaincy is in the bone.
God should bring us to another year on the day the Holy Prophet Muhammad was born.
On the day of the Damba, if you were a useless drummer, on that day you will not be useless. And if you were a strong drummer, on that day you will become stronger.
No one in Dagbon plays a type of playing that is more important or better than the playing we drummers have.
I think in my heart that all people who play music would have wanted to be drummers, but they cannot.
Drumming has no end, unless someone throws it away.
The respect of drumming is like the Damba itself.
To talk about the Damba Festival is to talk about drumming and how we drummers are important in Dagbon here.
Something which is coming will not go back again.
We Dagbamba say that when you start to eat, it is over to the food; if you start it, then you have to know how you will finish it.
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