The Talking Drum

There once lived in Ìlú-Òrùn an old master drummer named Baba Adéwálé. His talking drum was the most respected in the region. With it he announced births in the dark before sunrise. He summoned the elders to council. He warned the farms when rain was coming. He cooled the heart of the king when the king's heart was hot. People said the drum had its own soul — that it knew things even Baba did not.

When Baba grew old, he called his grandson Kúnlé to him. Kúnlé was a clever boy, with quick hands and a sharp tongue, but his patience was thin and his pride was thick.

"My son," said Baba, placing the drum in his hands, "the talking drum is not a tongue of leather. It is a tongue of the village. What you say with it, the village hears as if it had spoken itself. Say only what is true. Say only what builds. Three villages will listen to you. Three villages can be set on fire by one careless word."

Kúnlé nodded the nod of a young man who is already thinking of something else.

For a season he obeyed. He drummed births and meetings. The compounds bowed to him in the market.

Then one afternoon at the wrestling ground, Olú, a boy his age, threw him on his back in front of the girls. Kúnlé got up with sand in his teeth and an idea in his heart.

That night he climbed onto the drumming platform and called the talking drum to him. He played softly at first. Then he began to speak.

The drum said, in the voice the whole country knew: "Olú has stolen yam from the king's barn. Olú has stolen yam from the king's barn."

It was a lie.

But the message travelled. It crossed the stream into Ìlú-Ìwòye. It crossed the next stream into Ìlú-Àgbà. By morning, men from three villages had come with sticks to Olú's father's compound. Olú's father stood at his doorway and swore his son was innocent, but the visitors had heard the drum, and the drum did not lie.

In the quarrel that followed, a young man was struck on the head with a stone. He did not get up again.

When the truth finally walked out — a younger brother who had seen Kúnlé on the drumming platform — the elders called Kúnlé before them. They did not shout. That was the terrible part. They sat in a half-circle around the dead boy's mother and asked Kúnlé only one question.

"Who will you drum for to bring this one back?"

Kúnlé could not answer.

Baba Adéwálé stood up slowly. He took the talking drum from his grandson's hands. He carried it to the centre of the square. He laid it on the ground, knelt before it, and with his own knife he cut the leather skin from end to end.

The drum gave one last sigh, and then was silent.

"This drum," said Baba to the gathered villages, "served three villages for the seventy years of my hand. In one night, my own grandson made it kill a child. Hear me now, and tell your children: a word is a small thing in the mouth and a large thing in the air. Once it has left you, it will go wherever it pleases, and you cannot run faster than it."

Kúnlé was sent away from his father's compound to learn carving in a faraway town. He did not return for many years. When he came back, he was a quiet man. He never touched a drum again. But sometimes, late at night, the children of the village heard him in his small room — talking softly to himself in the rhythm of a drum that no longer existed, asking forgiveness of a boy who could no longer hear.