Akan: Ghana musical instrument

The Akan drum is a drum that was made in the West Africa and later was found in the colony of Virginia in the Northern America. The drum is now the oldest African-American object in the British museum and also the oldest surviving in any part of the world. The musical instrument is a reminder of all three continents’ participation in the estimated twelve million people transported across the Atlantic as part of the slave trade.

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source of picture: nairaland.com

The musical instrument is produced of two varieties of wood that are native of the sub-Saharan Africa, Baphia and Cordia Africana. The later fine-grained hardwood is popular because of its ability to be carved and its resonance that makes it suited to musical instruments. The skin of the instrument came from a deer hide and was spread over the wooden structure with the use of vegetable fibre.

The drum was produced in the Ghana region of the western Africa between the 1700 and 1745, and was assumed to have travelled to America following a slave ship on board. As the slaves left their homes with nothing, it is assumed that the drum was brought inside the ship by a member of the crew or by a son of the African chief who had sold the slaves for transportation. To exercise their captives, the slave traders would dance the slaves. It was backed up that this was the reason why the drum was transported. The word Akan means to the culture of the Ghanaians known as the people of Asente, Fante and Akuapem today.

This exact drum was adopted in Virginia by Rev. Clerk on behalf of the British collector Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane had travelled all through Jamaica and had observed at first hand slaves performing musical instruments including those that were to evolve into the musical instrument known as banjo. He gathered examples of the tools of slavery and other artifacts that included this musical instrument. Erroneously, Sloane and Rev. Clerk thought that this musical drum was produced by the American Indians.

In the 1906, curators at the British museum found out that the drum could not have been produced by the Native Americans, but must have been manufactured in Africa. In the 1970s, the musical instrument became possible to use expertise from Gardens Kew to find out that the wood was grown in Africa. The musical instrument is thought to have formerly been produced for a musician in the orchestra of African chief.

This musical drum was chosen to be featured in A history of the world in 100 objects, a series of radio programs that began in the year 2010 as a partnership between the British museum and the BBC. The musical drum has also been used as a lead object in a special display at the museum called ‘From Africa to America; drumming, slavery, music’ in 2010. The exhibition looked at how the musical instrument was used in dances of the slaves, but also as an example of the collision of cultures that was produced by the slave trade that suddenly led to jazz and rock and roll. The owners of the slave were not sure of how they should treat the African music. On some plantations, musical drums are not allowed to be played.