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Dolsi-naa Abubakari Lunna traces his ancestry in drumming back for many generations.
His father, Lun-naa Wombei, was one of the leading drummers of his era. Dolsi-naa
Abubakari learned drumming from his father and his father’s brother, Mba
Ngolba, as well as Baba Alaasani, Fuseini Namowo, and Issahaku Namowo, who became
Namowo-naa, leader of all the drummers of Dagbon. From the late 1960s until
the early 1980s, Dolsi-naa Abubakari was the principal Dagomba drummer with
the Ghana National Folkloric Company. Currently, he lives in northern Ghana
where he makes his living as a farmer and drummer. He heads a large extended
family, and is training his children in the art and knowledge of drumming. Dolsi-naa
Abubakari has been visiting the United Sates and Canada annually since 1988.
He has taught at Tufts University, the Berklee College of Music and with many
independent African music and dance ensembles throughout North America. During
spring semester 2001, through funding support by the Diversity Initiative and
the Bolwell-Toupin Fund, he was an Artist-in-Residence with the Music Department
and the Drama/Dance Department at Tufts University.
Drumming in Dagbon
For the Dagomba people, drummers not only provide music for dancing, but also
keep the history of their traditional nation, Dagbon, and are authorities on
the customs of their ethnic group. Dagbon is located in the savannah grasslands
of western Africa, and was one of the most well organized kingdoms in precolonial
Africa. Although the kingdom today is incorporated into the modern nation-state
of Ghana, Dagbon still has its own language, history, economy, politics, social
structure, and a culture. The people of Dagbon are the Dagomba ("dah-GOHM-bah")
and their language is Dagbanli ("dahg-BAHN-li").
In Dagbon performing arts are essential. Drummers are members of inherited artisan
lineages called lunsi ("LOON-see", singular: luna, "LUHNG-ah"),
and have an integral role in the Dagomba way of life. They keep the genealogy
of chiefs and play at all rituals and ceremonies. They are storytellers who
narrate the history of families and the nation through their drumming, singing,
recitation, and speech. They also are entertainers who drum for dances. Because
of their detailed and comprehensive knowledge of the past, they are counselors
to political leaders (chiefs); because of their understanding of proverbs, they
are advisors to all of their people. Any important community event—wedding,
funeral, naming-ceremony, or festival—needs the drummer’s performance.
Social dancing cements bonds of kinship, friendship, and gender-based solidarity.
Drumming is a professional specialty that is inherited through the father’s
line. In Dagbon if you are not born into it, you do not think to become a drummer.
Youngsters begin to learn their art/craft by being around drumming, listening
to their mother’s stories, beating little drums, and going with the older
people to performances. Later, adolescent drummers work in a long, disciplined
apprenticeship with "teaching fathers" who impart the vast lore that
a good drummer must know.
The Dagomba Drum Ensemble
The Dagomba drum ensemble is made of principally of two different types of drums.
The cylindrical drums, called gun-gon ("goong-GAWNG"), have
two goatskin heads stretched over a hollowed out section of a tree trunk. A
snare-like leather cord, chahira ("CHAH-rah"), running across
the upper part of each skin divides the head into two playing areas, each with
its own sound and musical function. There is a beauty created in gun-gon
drumming from the interplay between its two "voices"—the buzzy
quiet sound of the chahira and the round booming sound of the center-skin.
The other drum, called luna, has a wooden body carved into an hourglass
shape and two goatskin heads that are connected by leather cords. (The term
luna in Dagbanli means both drum and drummer.) In the expert left arm
of a drummer like Dolsi-naa Abubakari, the squeeze-and-release of the luna
ropes artfully controls the drum’s pitch and resonance. Dolsi-naa instructs
students who mistakenly over-emphasize the musical importance of sticking, "The
left is also drumming!" The drumstick gives precise articulation and timing,
controls loudness, and enables the drummer to embellish, but musical rhythm
comes from both the arms.
The musical roles in the drum ensemble are the leading luna part, the
answering luna part, and the gun-gon part, which may be divided into
leading and supporting parts. The lead luna plays preset drum-talks upon
which he may improvise. These improvisations may emphasize rhythmic displacements,
new grooves, changes in polyrhythmic density with the other drums, shifts in
phrase length, and pleasing linear melodies. No matter how musically brilliant,
everything is grounded in the drum-talk. Much like the leading luna,
the lead gun-gon player improvises on its drum-talks. The gun-gon,
however, is closer to what Dolsi-naa Abubakari calls "pure rhythm"
since it has many fewer drum-talks.
Musical Talk
Dolsi-naa counsels his students to regard Dagomba drumming as musical talk,
rather than to think of it as "music." Drums talk. Drums sing. Drumming
definitely is musical, but to regard it uncritically as "music" is
to misunderstand the African perspective. International students who study drumming
as if it is music tend to focus on abstract sonic effects like melody, rhythm,
form, accent, and texture. From Dolsi-naa’s perspective, however, one should
think of these qualities as ways to make a drum talk clearly and beautiful.
"Where is the beat?" or "Where’s the 1?" might seem
to be pertinent questions, but they actually can be profoundly misleading.
Paradoxically, teachers do not easily reveal the meaning of drumming phrases
to students. There are many reasons for this: drum-talks may attract the dangerous
"shade" of a dead person; a teacher may not be sure of a student’s
respectful attitude or trustworthy character; knowledge is a reward that must
be earned; and secrecy confers power. But Dolsi-naa uses vocables as a way to
convey to his students simultaneously the language-like quality of a drumming
phrase and its important musical features.
Repertory
Dolsi-naa’s repertory includes pieces from four different categories of
Dagomba music: Group Dances, Praise Name Dances, Festival Dances, and Praise
Name Talks. Drummers supply the music for Group Dances, which as the name suggests
are for groups whose members share some significant characteristic, such as
gender, age, or occupation. In the Group Dances, different sections are performed
one after the other, like a medley or suite. The ever-repeating phrase of the
answering luna and/or gun-gon drums establishes a steady groove
that creates an open field for rhythmic play by the other performers.
Praise Name Dances are proverbs set to drumming. In response to the language-laden
calls of the leading luna player, the other drummers answer in unison
with a catchy musical setting of the proverb. These proverbs evoke a defining
feature of the leader being commemorated; the drum-talks played by the leading
luna narrate episodes from the person’s history. In Dagbon, dancers
come out one-by-one to display their moves.
Festivals mark the yearly calendar in Dagbon. Each has its own "signature"
music.
Praise Name Talks are played in free rhythm on luna by one drummer. The
drum-talks are similar to the lead drumming in the grooving Praise Name Dances,
but can be presented in a more truly language-like style. Choosing to "talk
the history" of one chieftaincy, or the family of one person, the drummer
moves in chronological order through the grandfathers and grandmothers until
arriving at those alive today. The duration of this performance is entirely
a function of the extent of the drummer’s knowledge and the amount of time
available. An expert like Dolsi-naa Abubakari could drum in this way for an
entire evening and narrate just a small portion of the story of the people of
Dagbon. Indeed, the most prestigious genre of luntalli ("loon-TAH-lee,"
"the art of drumming") is Sambanluna ("sahm-bahng-LOONG-ah"),
all night sessions of history singing and drumming.
—Notes written by David Locke, compiled and edited by
Where’s the 1? Productions | 
