Importance of African drums in African Culture & life

African drums hold a unique place in the history of The african continent. In Western Culture the thought of drumming is nearly always associated with amusement or just to add to the music quality of a song. Within Africa, drums hold the deeper symbolic and historic meaning.Drums are almost always a good accompaniment for any manner of wedding ceremony - births, deaths, marriages together with a ritual dance. The actual vicious sound of many percussion pounding together is also a required installment to stir up feelings in a battle or battle to inspire excitement and fervour. Importance of African Drums in african culture is so greater. Drums are a unique type of communication that can resound feelings associated with celebration, moods of unhappiness, or grand entrances associated with African kings and queens.

Drums are percussion devices played by the action to be beaten or shaken by fingers or sticks. African percussion have different applications and processes, and their use is not restricted to the 54 countries around the continent. Drums have journeyed with African culture all over the world. The origins of Africa drums are hazy, however, many reports do shed a few light. James Blades says in "Percussion Instruments and their History" which "extracts from Portuguese books associated with 400 years ago refer to the actual
existence and importance of the actual drum in South Africa." Patricia Telesco as well as Don Two Eagles Waterhawk declare in "Sacred Beat: From the Coronary heart of the Drum Circle" that Egyptian women danced with drums to compliment the gods, while the Wahinda in far eastern Africa considered it the death wish for a man to check out a drum.
There is little room for argument that the music of sub-Saharan Africa is defined primarily by rhythm. Melody may play a part in African music, but play a traditional West African song for anyone only remotely aware of musical traditions and chances are they will locate the source almost immediately. It is commonly agreed that
rhythm plays a much larger part in the African tradition than it does elsewhere.
Drumming for the most part is a backbone on which to hang instruments of melody and little else for the rest of the world. Rhythm in Africa, most seem to agree, goes well beyond mere musical expression; rhythm is a method of communication. Indeed, for many researchers, rhythm in Africa music has attained the level of a language all its own.