Abstract
Yorùbá dùndún drumming is an oral tradition which allows for manipulation of gliding pitch contours in ways that correspond to the differentiation of the Yorùbá linguistic tone levels. This feature enables the drum to be employed as both a musical instrument and a speech surrogate. In this study, we examined four modes of the dùndún talking drum, compared them to vocal singing and talking in the Yorùbá language, and analyzed the extent of microstructural overlap between these categories, making this study one of the first to examine the vocal surrogacy of the drum in song. We compared the fundamental frequency, timing pattern, and intensity contour of syllables from the same sample phrase recorded in the various communicative forms and we correlated each vocalization style with each of the corresponding drumming modes. We analyzed 30 spoken and sung verbal utterances and their corresponding drum and song excerpts collected from three native Yorùbá speakers and three professional dùndún drummers in Nigeria. The findings confirm that the dùndún can very accurately mimic microstructural acoustic temporal, fundamental frequency, and intensity characteristics of Yorùbá vocalization when doing so directly, and that this acoustic match systematically decreases for the drumming modes in which more musical context is specified. Our findings acoustically verify the distinction between four drumming mode categories and confirm their acoustical match to corresponding verbal modes. Understanding how musical and speech aspects interconnect in the dùndún talking drum clarifies acoustical properties that overlap between vocal utterances (speech and song) and corresponding imitations on the drum and verifies the potential functionality of speech surrogacy communications systems.
Highlights
Yorùbá dùndún drumming is a musical-oral tradition wherein the characteristic of the drum as a variable-pitched membranophone allows the manipulation of intensity and pitch.1 in ways that can mimic the tones and gliding contours of the Yorùbá, a tonal language, spoken in south-west Nigeria
Discussion of Timing Results The results confirmed our hypotheses, with the highest correlations for timing occurring between DT-D and Vocal Talking (VT) and getting progressively smaller as drum samples become increasingly more music-like, with the lowest correlation occurring between Drum Singing (DS) and Vocal singing (VS)
The inclusion of these rhythmic embellishments varies across the samples collected, resulting in variances in correlation of the timing profiles between DT-P and VT
Summary
Yorùbá dùndún drumming is a musical-oral tradition wherein the characteristic of the drum as a variable-pitched membranophone allows the manipulation of intensity and pitch. in ways that can mimic the tones and gliding contours of the Yorùbá, a tonal language, spoken in south-west Nigeria. This unique feature enables the dùndún drum (commonly referred to as the “talking drum”) to be. Prominent characteristics of the dùndún include its speech and musical features. Draw elements from music and speech to communicate emotions on the drum (Durojaye 2019a). The historical and social background around the dùndún tradition, organization and training of drummers, and the three main modes of the dùndún drum are addressed in Akin Euba’s monograph Yorùbá Drumming (1990), the most extensive work on the dùndún to date
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
