Drum Telegraphy

Any pulp writer worth his salt knows that when his locale is darkest Africa he can't use too many drums. In a good standard plot, talking drums warn fierce natives of the unsuspecting white man's approach while the reader shudders. Last week in Natural History Dr. Albert Irwin Good, who understands Bulu and related African dialects, published the first popular article on the linguistics of drums, the complicated telegraphy whereby African drummers talk across the jungle.

Dr. Good lived for many years in South Cameroons, West Africa as a Presbyterian missionary. Drum thumping is as familiar to him as the clack of a telegraph key. An ordinary drum, he says, can be heard three or four miles by day, ten or 15 miles at night. "I know of one exceptional drum that has been heard 25 miles, though its messages could no longer be understood."

A signal drum is made by an expert drum maker who digs out the core of a 2-to 3 1/2-ft. log. He does his digging through a 3-to 4-in. slit running the length of the log. The wood on one side of the slit is thicker than that on the other to provide a difference in pitch between the two sides.

The Bulu dialect of the African Bantu language can be drummed almost as well as spoken. Reason: it is even more a language of tones than official Chinese. Where the Chinese use four tones, the Bulus have five--two high, two low and one in the middle. So distinct are the pitches and rhythms of the language that sometimes a couple of people "too far apart to hear actual words call back and forth using only the syllables kiki in the tones of the words they would employ in ordinary conversation." The thick and the thin sides of the drum are played in pitches and rhythms to match the language.

Formerly every Bulu man and almost every woman had a special drum signature, like a radio program's theme song--a cryptic sentence full of jungle implications. Sample drum names: "Even if you dress up finely, love is the only thing"; "The giant wood rat has no child, the house rat has no child"; "You'll die of witchcraft at midnight." Messages are addressed simply by tapping out the recipient's drum name. The sender's drum name follows, then the message.

Messages are usually transmitted by a code sentence of which there are about a dozen. For instance, "Mot a nkele nda, ve atan, atan (Person he not go in house, but outside, outside)" is a warning that there is a leopard on the loose. When the drum says: "A nto ane jomolo, jomolo (He is as weakening, weakening)," it means a tribesman is very ill. When a man has died, the drum taps: "Only folds, folds hands on breast."

A hungry man returning from a hunt may stop at a village four miles from home, send a message to his wife to come in from her garden in the jungle and feed him. Message in drum code: "She is better than the daughter of other tribes, she who stands there. Oyono must not join the fighting, I don't want Oyono to die. Come walk quickly, quickly, I feel hunger not small." Dinner will be waiting when he gets home.

A good drummer knows not only the code messages, but code names for some 200 people. Sometimes in the early morning, when sound travels best, he will make a roll call of all important people in the district. Dr. Good passes on some good advice for drummers: "Don't lean over the drum or its sound will be muffled. Look in the direction you wish the sound to go. A good drummer must not eat chicken wings, give them to someone else."

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