AFRICA NIGERIA

Nigeria is certainly a “country of extremes,” in which great wealth exists side by side with great poverty, a place where interreligious conflicts, unrest in the oil-rich Niger Delta region and infamous 419 scams give it a constant public-relations black eye…yet despite the nation’s reputation for chaos and corruption, Nigerian people, proud of their 250 ethnic groups, their literary titans, their musical legends and of course Nollywood, report that they are the happiest people in the world. Musically, Nigeria makes us all very happy. Just bringing Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti forward would have been enough, but Nigerian music offers us more and more and more.

In class we (pretend to) play the “Talking Drum” (Dun Dun) is a West African “hourglass drum,” popular in Nigeria, that overflows with personality. The drum “talks” when the drummer constricts the ropes that run along its sides, tightening or loosening the drum head to create higher or lower sounds, and by using a mallet to hit the head in particular ways to elicit delightfully conversational tones.