Talk:Kele people (Congo)

Drums - not extinct yet

"By the time Carrington wrote his book, the use of drum language was already fading and schoolchildren were no longer learning it. In the sixty years since then, telephones made drum language obsolete and completed the process of extinction."

My experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo tells me that: 1) telephones have only existed in major cities; mobile phones very recently have appeared in sizeable towns (the signal dies when you leave the town). 2) drums are still used to send messages. 3) There is no doubt about their decline - and they will eventually become extinct because, not onlt will there be noboby to send the messages - people will have forgotten how to listen to the messages. Francis Hannaway 21:14, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure the best way to phrase it. The source clearly says children were no longer learning it in 1949, and now the drum language is extinct. Perhaps it is just the drum language of these people? Putting together a different stub article, different region, I came across the depressing statement that LRA fighters were well equipped with cellphones. There is an article on Talking drum that could use a lot of improvement. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Aymatth2! Yes the LRA will have cellphones, but theirs are not everyday phones like we have - they are satellite phones and don't need a local transmitting mast. I was in Basankusu when the 1998 DRC war started - it was then known as the War of Communication. This was because of the "Motorolas" that the commanders used from one side of the country. We had a sat-phone - with a dish - I could tell you some tales about suspicion and arrests and ... but maybe another time :).

Yes, you could be right - the skills may have been lost earlier where the Kele people live. Certainly, where I lived, which was 180 km east of Basankusu, there was no real incentive to learn. Instead of phones there were two "phonie" - that is, radio transmitters. One was at the Catholic mission and the other at the Protestant mission. They were restricted to one (different) frequency each. From these two transmitters, people could ask to send messages to a radius of about 200 km. If messages were to go further, they would need to be relayed from a larger centre. The protestant mission employed someone to run the "phonie" as a telegraph office. Those villages still don't have cellphones.

When I arrived in 1992, I was told that news of the death of a well known priest had arrived by relay of drum messages over a 100 km distance before the "phonie" message, because as soon as the death occured - in the night - they will have started drumming. Radio transmition tended to be at set times to fit in with government restrictions.

But, in short, I'm not disputing your facts - I'm just saying that the word extinct could possibly be almost extinct - or gravely endangered.

The article Talking drum, yes, I read it yesterday. The picture is different to the "Tam-tam" drums that I saw. Hide covered drums existed and were used in music-making, but the ones for sending messages were hollowed out logs with a letter-box shaped sounding hole. They would have a high and a low note to reflect the tonality of the language. The people were Mongo - and spoke Lomongo. A tonal language travels best through all the trees - the vowel sounds holding much more meaning than in English. So, the protestant church would sound out each morning low, high, high, ..., low, high, high, ..., low, high, high, ..., - which was heard as, Boyaka! Boyaka! Boyakaaa! meaning, (you (plural)) come! come! come! ... I suppose we would say "Come on everybody, let's go!", or something similar.

Oh, I've just found the article about these drums - Slit drum and Lokole.

Best wishes, Francis Hannaway (talk) Francis Hannaway 08:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

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