The West African instrument dùndún is also known as “talking drum” because players can match the pitch and rhythm of speech patterns on it. A new study reveals just how closely dùndún players match ...

Afropop Worldwide. It was a superb program about “drum speech”–a fascinating subject that has interested ethnomusicologists for a long time. Ned Sublette writes about it in his masterful study, Cuba ...

When Chimie Bangoura moved to Vermont in 2007, he knew plenty of languages, but English was not one of them. Growing up in West Africa, he spoke French at school and learned the six native languages ...

He teaches the djembe and dun-dun drums. The dun-duns, played with sticks, are basically bass drums pitched to mid, low and high. The djembe, a solo instrument, is a skin-covered, goblet-shaped drum ...