For Cameroonian musicologist Francis Bebey, the drum ‘possesses a vast range of materials, shapes, uses, and taboos’ which, alongside other instruments, and the voice, orchestrate ceremonies. As Bebey writes in his 1975 survey African Music: A People’s Art, ‘the voice and speech are often synonymous’, observing how the voice of the drum is used to ‘communicate a piece of news or to send a message from one village to another’. In the African diaspora, drum rhythms also document ancestral histories of migration or colonial displacement across time and space. However, given the drum’s supernatural reverence in African culture, Bebey warns that studying the techniques of drumming ‘requires a patient apprenticeship’.

Drum circles are found in African diasporic communities as a participatory practice for performing polyrhythms. For many, sounding and improvising with polyrhythms is a way of knowing ancestral history. Veronique Belinga and Christxpher Oliver have worked with Ras Happa to design a drum circle to sound the Gumbe. Through this participatory process, they explore polyrhythms, drumming techniques, and performance while tracing Maroon rhythms, Assiko and Makossa. In addition to the drum circle, both Belinga and Oliver also share archival materials with references to literature, music, and audio-visual documentation that contexualize Gumbe in relation to other drumming traditions across different African and African diaspora cultures, particularly Jamaica, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon. Taking the men’s African Cup of Nations held in Cameroon in 1972 as a starting point, they explore a range of cultural production and transformation experienced during world sports competitions, with a particular focus on football events in African societies.

The lecture performance is open to all and especially welcomes BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour). HKW strives to create an appreciative space for all and therefore asks for participation based on respect for all other participants.

This event takes place in the frame of On Football and the Theatre of Collective Body Making.