Our Deep Roots

I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours last week with Balikoowa Centurio, a fantastic teacher, artist, and musician from Uganda, Africa. Centurio is a widely respected musician in Uganda and is working with Vanderbilt University to record (for the first time ever in many cases) and archive the music of a long list of tribes and villages in his home country, and make them available on the internet. He came to visit the states for 3 weeks and has spent the past week in Nashville where I met him, heard his stories, heard him play, and even got to play along.

The stories about his culture were fascinating to me. The drums in Uganda are much more than entertainment or hobby, they are a way of life and even a necessity. In years in the not so distant past (Centurio was speaking of his parents and grandparents) his village was surrounded by the bush and as a matter of security each and every home had, and still has 2 things: A spear and a drum. If there was a problem in one of their homes, such as a large threatening animal approaching, they would play a specific rhythm on the drum and the neighbors would show up with their spears to defend them. Different rhythms meant different things including calls for help and the start of a church service. The drum is held in high regard and is always placed with the head facing up. If the drum is placed on the ground with the head facing down it is a symbol of grief and indicates death.

That's not to say that the drum is not used for entertainment or hobby, very much the opposite. Entire villages gather on a daily basis to play together. The rhythmic and musical traditions are passed down from generation to generation and everybody plays. They dig trenches around 3 feet deep and reportedly quite long, lay banana stalk from end to end, and set up tuned planks to form giant multi-player marimbas. The stalks are soft and allow resonance and the trenches act as a giant resonant chamber. Evidently you can feel the bass through the ground if you're anywhere near these pits. They fill-in and re-dig these pits on a regular basis and play drums, marimbas, and a few stringed instruments until all hours of the night. This is what they do with their free time, this is what they love.

These stories gave me a strange sense of pride in, and respect for my instrument. It helped me realize the importance of the drum and the vast and long standing history behind it. I loved Centurio's explanation of his relationship to music: "The drum is there, you are there, so play the drum! How can you feel stress when you play the drum?". I loved that at times we struggled to understand each other, but when he played a rhythm on the drum and nodded at me to join in, we understood each other and communicated fluently.

You can hear Centurio and many others playing from the Global Music Archive web page here: http://www.globalmusicarchive.org
The song 'Aba Africa Tuboineboine' is a good start and includes drums and xylophone (each tune lists the instruments that were used) and the performance venue is listed as 'Under a Mango tree'! I did an advanced search for Performers: Balikoowa (under 'collections and resources', 'search the digital collection') and found 63 songs that he played on, all of which stream through Real Player free of charge. 'Gurira Omwana Amayombera' is on of my favorites from that list thus far. I encourage you to dig into the history of the drum, the culture of the drum, and the power of the drum and take pride in what you do!