:: The use of African drums
:: The instruments of the tribes in Gambia
:: A drum called Djembe
:: How to learn to play a drum called Djembe

:: The use of African drums

Drums are wonderful instrument, and they have beautiful sound. In Gambia drums are very important in peoples daily life. We use drums in many different ways, we have drums, which are used for sending massages to the people in town or some time to send massage to the next village, and there are drums for ceremonies like weddings or naming ceremonies and there are also drums for healing people who are sick.

Drums are instrument that when you hear them you feel something inside your body, because they have this supper natural power, which goes into the body and touches our soul and wake our spirit. You see a drum beat, is the same as heartbeat they have the same pulse, so that way when we hear the spirit of the drum sound. We response immediately, and we responded in different ways.

There are some people when they hear sound of a drums, they cannot stand still, their whole body starts to move and in a few seconds they began to dance to the drum. Because the person spirit and the drummer and drum spirit comes together as one spirit, and that person will also have a very high spiritual communication with drum and the drummer, which any drummer or musician will love to when he/she is giving a concert to see people dancing to your music, the person is telling the drummer that he/she understand the spiritual drum language. So those kinds of people know how to use their spirit, because drums rhythm is an international language, in any culture or traditions they have drum rhythm in their society.

And there are other kind of people when they hear a drum they will immediately put their fingers into their ears, because they cannot stand the drum spirit, it makes them uncomfortable. They are afraid of their own spirit and energy they have, so the sound that comes out of the drum remain them their spirit. Which goes into the body very strongly and he/she cannot control it. So the only thing the person can do is to confront this sound of the drum, and how can you confront drum spirit. The only way to do it is to try and enjoy drum spirit and relax your own spirit when you are listening to drum and the drummer spirit.


There is also other kind of people, when they hear a drum sound, it makes them completely relax all over there body and they will come down to the earth. And let their body surrenders to the sound of the drum that they hear and they let the sound of the drum get into their body very deeply. It is a another way of drum healing, and the best way to get drum healing is, you have to lay down and close your eyes and let only the drum spirit go in to your body. But there are many ways to do drum healings. In Gambia some times you can see a person go into a trance, because he/she will let the spirit of the drum control he/her spirit the drummer and drum spirit.mariambabs@yahoo.com