ABSTRACT
A group of six adolescent, African-American males sit in a circle in the multipurpose room of their Baptist church. Each holds a traditional African Jimbe drum between his knees. They gather together on the sunny, late winter, Saturday afternoon for a common purpose-a lesson in African drumming. All eyes turn to their instructor, an African-American man named Erik, who stands in their circle behind a tall Congo drum. Erik talks with the group about the role of drums in African-American culture:
Drums are part of your culture. During slavery time they took all of these drums away and the only place that people had to gather together was in churches…. But they couldn’t drum. Drumming is part of everything. But what they did instead of drumming; what they did was like hand clappin’ and singin.’ That’s what they still do in churches today. When you hear somebody hand clappin’, sometimes that hand clappin’ is [these drums].
