Voices From A Drum

From the soil of Africa, trampled by shackled captives and bloodied by the whips of slavers, to the sweating forests and wave-lashed beaches of the Caribbean, the voices of the sacred drum accompany the master drummer, Entahso, in his exile. The songs of the drum are a nation's history, beaten out by frail and ageing hands, but still possessing a thundering and terrible authority. Before he dies, Entahso teaches his songs and skills to Mabouya, but when Mabouya himself is ready for death who is there to inherit the drum? Who is there - among a younger generation of dilletantes and self-servers - to keep alive the old stories and to tell the stories still unborn? Weaving through continents and centuries, Voices from a Drum tells of people whose spirit was not colonized, whose inner life was not fettered nor haltered, and whose ghosts still run free among the trees and the high, smoking rocks, breathing their resistance into the living.

Based on extensive field research in India and Pakistan, this new study examines the ways drumming and voices interconnect over vast areas of South Asia and considers what it means for instruments to be voice-like and carry textual messages in particular contexts. Richard K. Wolf employs a hybrid, novelistic form of presentation, in which a fictional protagonist interacts with Wolf's field consultants, to communicate ethnographic and historical realities that transcend the local details of any one person's life. The narrative explores how the themes of South Asian Muslims and their neighbors coming together, moving apart, and relating to God and spiritual intermediaries resonate across ritual and expressive forms such as drumming and dancing. Wolf weaves in the story of a family led by Ahmed Ali Khan, a North Indian ruler who revels in the glories of 19th century life, when many religious communities joined together harmoniously in grand processions. His journalist son Muharram Ali obsessively scours the subcontinent in pursuit of a music he naively hopes will dissolve religious and political barriers. The story charts the breakdown of this naiveté. A daring narrative of music, religion and politics in late twentieth century South Asia, The Voice in the Drum delves into the social and religious principles around which Muslims, Hindus, and others bond, create distinctions, reflect upon one another, or decline to acknowledge differences.

Based on extensive research in India and Pakistan, this new study examines the ways drumming and voices interconnect over vast areas of South Asia and considers what it means for instruments to be voice-like and carry textual messages in particular contexts. Richard K. Wolf employs a hybrid, novelistic form of presentation in which the fictional protagonist Muharram Ali, a man obsessed with finding music he believes will dissolve religious and political barriers, interacts with Wolf's field consultants, to communicate ethnographic and historical realities that transcend the local details of any one person's life. The result is a daring narrative that follows Muharram Ali on a journey that explores how the themes of South Asian Muslims and their neighbors coming together, moving apart, and relating to God and spiritual intermediaries resonate across ritual and expressive forms such as drumming and dancing.

This is a short story set in the Gobi desert. It tells the story of Bill Gordon, also called Black Gordon. The Gobi desert is described as an "ancient world, wherein rivers had vanished and the ruins of cities older than China itself had been covered by the sands." Losing his compass, with little water on him, Black Gordon is on his way to meet his friend, Tom Eldridge.

A little boy drums up quite a procession.

An approachable introduction to the drum kit, drummers, and drumming, and the key debates surrounding the instrument and its players.

Dancing to the Drum Machine is a never-before-attempted history of what is perhaps the most controversial musical instrument ever invented: the drum machine. Here, author Dan LeRoy reveals the untold story of how their mechanical pulse became the new heartbeat of popular music. The pristine snap of the LinnDrum. The bottom-heavy beats of the Roland 808. The groundbreaking samples of the E-MUSP-1200. All these machines-and their weirder, wilder-sounding cousins-changed composition, recording, and performance habits forever. Their distinctive sounds and styles helped create new genres of music, like hip hop and EDM. But they altered every musical style, from mainstream pop to heavy metal to jazz. Dan LeRoy traces the drum machine from its low-tech beginnings in the Fifties and Sixties to its evolution in the Seventies and its ubiquity in the Eighties, when seemingly overnight, it infiltrated every genre of music. Drum machines put some drummers out of work, while keeping others on their toes. They anticipated virtually every musical trend of the last five decades: sequencing, looping, sampling, and all forms of digital music creation. But the personalities beneath those perfect beats make the story of drum machines a surprisingly human one-told here for the very first time.

Born in Nigeria, Onye brings the heart and soul of Africa to The Drum: Voice of the Village. He teaches the reader how to approach the drum, how to play the drum, how to use the drum for healing and awakening as well as for entertainment, and how to create and celebrate community through the power of the drum. Onye tells the story of his village - where the drum was the heartbeat of the people, sounding out the messages of a new birth, mourning the passing of an ancestor, dancing the joy of new love. The drum was always vibrating, speaking the emotions that connected the people of the village with each other and with the world. A pioneer in using music, rhythms and dance to bring diverse communities together, Onye shows how music has a profoundly transformative capacity to affect personal and societal healing. He teaches how to use the drum for health, healing and ceremony as well as for creating community. Onye Onyemaechi is the founding director of Village Rhythms and Insights for Healing. He is a celebrated recording artist, performer, producer, composer, teacher, mentor, healer and consultant. Book jacket.