AFRICA: Drumming Baptist

For years the doomful sound of drumming in the Congo night struck white men weak with fright. Black tribesmen, pounding out an ominous drum language of their own, threatened death to pale interlopers.

Of late the white man’s telephone has made many tribesmen lose respect for their ancient art of drum conversation. They have forgotten their drum vocabulary, the drum names given them at birth.

From Stanleyville, Belgian Congo, Chicago Daily Newsman George Weller last week told how a young British Baptist missionary had gone so far native as to revive drum talking. John Carrington, 29, learned the drum tongue from a tattooed old drum master, Lifindiki Tuaytolo, freely translated as Quarrelsome Smith. Missionary Carrington and Quarrelsome Smith taught young tribesmen how to converse with a two-toned hollowed wood drum.

Newsman Weller stood near by when Drummer Carrington spotted a hippopotamus’ nose above the muddy Congo waters, banged out the suggestion that surrounding tribesmen kill the beast. They whammed the reply: “We cannot overpower majesty of his jaws.” When storm clouds rose, Carrington socked out: “Bad man, son of disease, is coming down upon clods of earth.” Tribesmen began closing the doors of the wicker huts.

Newsman Weller guessed that Drummer Carrington’s enthusiasm might preserve drum talking for at least a few more years in the Stanleyville neighborhood. But even in Africa change is inevitable. Today, when Quarrelsome Smith wishes to refer with his drums to a white man, he politely beats: “White man spirit from the forest.” In his youth he would have walloped: “Death on the river.”