Dance perspectives on drum language: A Yoruba example

Abstract

Among the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria, dancers have the ability to relate not only to music and rhythm, but also to the Yoruba tonal language. This is due to the fact that instruments being played during a dance event, once they are manipulated by the drummer, can follow the Yoruba language’s tonality. Therefore, the so-called talking drums have the ability to articulate proverbs, poems, stories. The dancers’ representations or interpretations of what the drums are saying create different artistic and cognitive dimensions during the dancing. When does a dancer follow only the rhythms of the drums and when does he or she have meaning in his/her gestures? What happens when the meanings derive from proverbial language? And moreover, what happens with the newest Yoruba dance generation which is said to have neglected their indigenous language for English? Going beyond choreomusical relationships, improvising, mimicking, interpreting and verbalising the content of the tonal percussions are some dimensions of Yoruba dance, which derive from exploring the personal dance experiences of a community of thought in Yorubaland.