DRUMS OF AFRICA

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 175, 21 April 1937, Page 6

DRUMS OF AFRICA

Will a White Ever Read Them? INSTINCTIVE TO NATIVES IVill a white man ever be able to read a message beaten out on the drums of Africa—the famous bush telegraph that carries messages across vast areas? Mr. John Molteno, grandson of Sir John Molteno, first Prime Minister of the Cape, discussed this question with me the other day (writes Lawrence G. Green, in the Johannesburg "Star”). Mr. Molteno is now part owner of a gold mine on the Lupa River, Tanganyika, but after leaving Cambridge lie spent years in tropical Africa farming and elephant hunting, and he has heard the drums in many far corners of Africa and has tried to solve the riddle of their meaning. Once he met an American scientist, a Harvard graduate, who had spent months listening to the drums. “You cannot get inside the brain of the African to discover why he thinks differently from the white man —though we know that his mental processes are different,” declared the American. “The drum system is not an artificial Morse code—it is as natural as the negro’s instinct. It is a rhythm, like the negro's speech, where one word has many meanings, according to the pronunciation. There is no thought which cannot be expressed with the aid of the drums, no message so intricate that it cannot be thudded out into the night by a skilful drummer.” Drums Beat Canoes. Mr. Molteno found strong■ confirmation of this view during his wanderings from the Nile to the Übangi, from the Lake Chad country to Tanganyika. Warring tribes would forget their quarrels to relay a message that had come from the south and that would pass on hundreds of miles to the north. The drums sounded over rivers and international frontiers, just as they talked long before the white man set foot in Africa. Some years ago Mr. Molteno was L.ating elephant with a Russian partner along the remote upper reaches of the Übangi. This river marks the boundary between French and Belgian territory. About 300 miles up the river from the junction with the main stream of the Congo the partners visited a chief and attempted to enter into a business alliance with him. They knew that a hostile cannibal tribe inhabited the hunting area and that their ivory would be stolen unless the carriers received protection from this chief. When the partners arrived the chief was drinking palm wino; he was drunk and insolent. During the argument that followed the excitable Russian struck the chief and an unpleasant situation developed. The chief’s followers ran for their spears. Mr. Molteno and the Russian hurried to their canoes and paddled away downstream. They thought no more of the incident. until they reached their base, a village several hundred miles from the scene of the tow. There a friendly native met them and gave a detailed account of events at the chief’s village. Mr. Molteno noted dates and time's, and discovered that the news had come through by drum signals within 16 hours of their hasty farewell tp the drunken chief. The drums had erred in one detail, for the message had said that Mr. Molteno and the Russian had been arrested. Native friends of the Russian, scenting trouble with the authorities, bad immediately buried unlicensed gun s and ivory belonging to the partners. Lorry-Driver Assisted. Drum talk has a wide vocabulary. A Frenchman organised a motor transport. service in the Stanleyville district. Once he burst his tires on a lonely bush track and found that repairs were impossible. “Can you send a message to my brother in Stanleyville?” the Frenchman asked the nearest village headman. Within a few hours natives on the outskirts of Stanleyville (150 miles away) were reading the drum signals. The exact position of the stranded Frenchman was given, and the message stated that, he needed “new wheels.” Thus help was secured as surely as though the appeal had been written on a telegraph form. Mr. Molteno’s most amusing experience with the drums came when he was hunting one day in a district, where, according to the gun-bearer, there were no natives. The country had been devastated by sleeping sickness, villages bad been abandoned, and the march was through an empty waste. . Suddenly his (‘til's caught a distant tattoo —the unmistakable “thud-thud-tbud” of slicks on hollow wood. He turned to the gun-bearer. “I thought you said there was no village here?” The gun-bearer grinned. “Sokomatu,” he replied. “Just like a man. They walked cautiously toward the sound and found a chimpanzee drumming on a fallen treeOfficers’ Moves “Telegraphed.” In the Congo and West Africa, where the art of drum signalling is most highly developed, drums are hollowed out of trees with a long slit forming “lips” ami allowing variations in sound. Leather-covered types of drums are also in use, the “operator” using more than one drum to send a message. _ Every man in a village has his “drum name”—a fact which Mr. Molteno discovered when he visited the chiefs in search of curriers. At first a chief would reply, “It is now nine in the morning, and the men are all away gathering honey, and watching their fish-traps.” “Call them up.” suggested Mr. Molteno. The chief would then send for his drummer, and one by one the men would-return to the village. Similarly, a white man who is well known to the natives receives a drum name. The movements of officials are always broadcast, and no chief is ever taken by surprise when the administrator pays a call.