Diola Drummers
Hands of the Child: the Diola Drummers of Casamance
By Mei-Ling Mcnamara 05/23/07
An honorable mention in the 2007 Traverse contest, “Hands of the Child” captures a young woman’s experience traveling through the Casamance region of Senegal where, with the help of a local non-profit cultural exchange organization, she makes a special connection with the Casamance drummers.
If India is sound of the harp, then Africa is the sound of the drum.
-Luca D’Ottavio
In southern Senegal, the Casamance River glides quiescent and coiled through the mangrove forest, a flowing shape against the strong geometry of villages, the power points of sun and field. The Wilis, a bright steamer, meanders through the brackish water, the morning sun dazzling the wake as we cruise into port.
I step off the balustrade and onto the gangplank, and Luca D’Ottavio and Marc Cirilli are there to meet me. Together they have formed the Human Experiences Linking Project (H.E.L.P. Association), a non-profit organization that places visitors with unique cultural exchanges and small-scale development work. It is more than a charity, borne out of a deep respect for the ethnic tribal groups and the preservation of their cultures.
In a local open-air café shaded with jacaranda and flamboyant, a waiter greets us warmly with handshakes, firing rapid questions at Luca in a mixture of local Diola and French. Meters away, fishermen pull their dugout canoes from shore while flamingos dip their beaks into the muddied banks.
“If people want to visit the Casamance region,” says Luca, an Italian émigré from Rome, “we offer them a real insight into what exists. This isn’t the showing of sights - these are families and friends that we have known and built relationships with for years. One way for someone to have a real connection with people is to work together on a project.”
Marc, his soft-spoken French counterpart, has lived in Zinguinchor for over fifteen years. He is passionate about the place, the people, and the urgent need for the Casamance to emerge from its former isolation.
Their projects have included renovating schools, constructing wells and assisting in reparations of villages. They have delivered textbooks to classrooms, provided sports equipment for local teams, donated musical equipment and provided fishermen with new nets.
Still, Luca and Marc insist that their aim is not to become a large development organization, but enable “people to be touched by the same magic that has touched us, and by investing in a project that is about building relationships and gaining exposure to something new.”
It is a unique idea, riding a fine line between responsible tourism groups and volunteer project organizations. Yet the label is elusive, and that may be part of their challenge in promoting it. They understand that to more recognized, that they have to be legitimized, in the sense that joining tourism charters and brandishing partnership logos will attract more people to their projects.
“We help people experience things here in one week that they would only normally get to experience in ten years of living here,” says Luca. It is not a superficial connection he insists, but a more intense experience through a service-oriented aim. Luca’s eyes suddenly light up. “Come on,” he says suddenly, “I am going to take you somewhere.”
We get on his motorcycle and head into the town center. Giant fruit bats swoop out of the leaves of mango trees. Women in brightly coloured boubous, the traditional raiment of the Senegalese, sell plates of silver fish while sipping hot hibiscus tea. In the fading light, boys are high-kicking soccer balls and girls are talking coyly in clustered groups.
This is the Africa that is not confined to congested, breeze-blocked cities, impoverished towns and dangerous border incursions. This is what Westerners often do not get the chance to see, and what Luca and Marc are trying to show. “Sure, we need better roads,” says Kalilou, a long-time Senegalese friend of Marc tells me, “but we don’t want to become like Dakar. It is so polluted, so expensive, always with so much traffic. People are always stressed and rushed. The life here is different.”
Luca puts it another way, “If India is the sound of the harp,” he says, “Then Africa is the sound of the drum.”
I feel what he means. It is a place thumping with intensity, immediacy and a rhythmic synesthesia of sight, scents and sounds. This sudden assault on the senses can make a visitor want to run away - or dance.
When I arrive at a small building with a covered cement terrace and hanging animal skins outside, it looks like any other shop along the boulevard. Young boys of varying ages sit lounging outside, sipping mint tea and chatting wildly. A tall man in his mid-fifties approaches the motorcycle. He greets Luca with a wide grin and a firm handshake. Luca turns to me and says, “Mei-Ling, this is Keba, and this,” he smiles, gesturing towards the building, “is his workshop.”
But this is not an ordinary workshop, and Keba Rumba Djighaly is not an ordinary man. I come to find out later that Keba is one of several famous drummers in Senegal who has traveled abroad, playing the seven-set African Rhumba drums in venues around the world. His downplayed dress, his serene demeanor, and his humble words attest to the strength and talent of a man firmly rooted in his homeland.
What Keba is doing in this small, modest shop is not exactly clear until I see the boys enter the windowless room and come out carrying drums of varying sizes. Djembe, tama, bougarabou and sabar drums, some played with hands, and others played with sticks. The djembe originated from the Mandinka people during the 12th century, when the empire of Mali stretched across West Africa. It has become the most widely played of all African instruments, and the worn skins are now being brought to life in front of my eyes by boys as young as three and as old as twenty.
West African music is poly-rhythmic, meaning that there can be as many as six or seven parts that are blended together to make each rhythm. Keba simultaneously plays the seven African rhumba drums, while listening to twelve boys play. He can immediately pick out a missed beat from the group, and the gaze of him registering that beat is intense. Watching him at work is no different than watching a master at his canvas. Keba says, “Music is like speaking. If you do not know enough words, then how can you make a beautiful sentence?”
The group is called “Le Troupe de Ding Ding Boolo,” or the Hands of the Child. They are sometimes accompanied by female singers and dancers, and are often asked to play at different occasions, such as marriage celebrations and baptisms. One of H.E.L.P.’s projects was to work with Keba to build a venue where the troupe could practice during the rainy season. Donations from past visitors who participated in the project made this into a reality, and today there is a space for these traditions to continue.
The next day Keba invites me to come to a neighborhood party celebrating a bride’s departure to her husband’s village. The group has been asked to play. Though Keba cannot be there himself, he makes me promise that I will dance. “I will ask everyone,” he says, shaking his finger at me, “and if you don’t dance, I will know.”
When I arrive, women have begun to tear down branches of a mango tree to swoop the crowd into a wider circle. When the djembes begin to beat, the women hold small wooden sticks over their heads and begin to strike them in time.
Suddenly one of the boys jumps up and begins to pound a stretched sabar drum with a stick, and the crowd erupts. Men throw their hands up and the women leap nimbly into the circle and dance wildly - their arms punching the air, their feet splayed and their headscarves unravelling. The drummer and the dancers are riveted to each other like a challenge. Marvelling at this awesome sight, I confess I lose courage to step out into the circle.
The dances and the music last for hours. As I make my exit sometime later, several drummers catch up with me, asking me to visit them before I leave the Casamance. They want to play for me one last time. This is a surprise and an honor. It is not because of my association with Luca and Marc that they ask me, but because the drummers and I have forged a connection, however small. Yet my acquaintance with H.E.L.P has afforded me this opportunity, and for this reason I am beginning to understand the special quality of their work.
On the day the Wilis is set to disembark, I come to the workshop, and they are waiting for me. With Keba presiding, the boys began to play. Women carrying sleeping babies stop to watch. Men walking along the sidewalks sit down to listen. Little children crowd onto the steps, clapping their tiny hands in time.
And I finally dance.
More information on the H.E.L.P. Association and its projects can be found at the website:
