Talk:Drums in communication

Could incorporate information from: The Drum Language of the Tumba People Roger T. Clarke The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 1. (Jul., 1934), pp. 34-48.

subscription required URL: Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28193407%2940%3A1%3C34%3ATDLOTT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X Xspartachris 08:41, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

This article is very similar to the earlier article jungle drums. They should be merged - probably at the new title, which is less colloquial. Securiger 11:20, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Rampaging deletionist
The part on drum code was wiped. Checking the worklog of this IP number http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=64.12.116.71 shows a truly enormous amount of damage done.

This, I believe is a new form of stealth deletionism; only parts of sections are wiped at a time and a plausible-sounding explanation given.

And no, I am not going to fix this; I have had far, far too much hassle with the deletionists in here to waste more time. Rather, until they are put up against the wall I will limit myself to pointing out what damage has been done.

Slit Gongs
The article sounds as if Slit gongs are a thing of the past. This might be true for some cultures and also for their use in long distance communication, but such instruments are still being made, e.g. in Cameroon. The article on slit gongs contains a recent picture. Nannus 22:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Txalaparta
This section is inaccurate. 1. The name for the whole country is Euskal Herria (historical Basque Country) 2. The extent of the txalaparta cannot be restricted to the Basque Autonomous Community, an administrative anecdote 3. Txalaparta doesn't lean on logs, but on trestles most of the times, formerly on two upside-down baskets at both ends of the planks 4. Txalaparta is an instrument different from xylophones, as this is melodic in nature, while txalaparta is basically percussion 5. It has not been proven that txalaparta was a communication device, except in very specific circumstances (cider making...), it is an assumption that doesn't hold water. Iñaki LL (talk) 20:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

African drum languages
This section has the line "Some peoples such as the Melanesians extend this idea further". However, Melanesians live in the South Pacific, of which is no mention they have drum languages, and are not part of Africa. Someone in the know should fix. Jalwikip (talk) 10:54, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

"Among the famous communication drums are the drums of West Africa (see talking drum)." This claim seems quite dubious. The tama is a drum that is not very loud, and it will carry at most a few hundred metres (quite likely less) even in quiet conditions and no wind. It seems inconceivable that this drum could be used to "transmit at the speed of 100 miles in an hour." People would have to have been spaced no further than 200 meters apart along the entire line of communication for the message to travel at all. But, given the low information content of any kind of drum code, it would be far more efficient to just station runners along the line and pass the message from person to person. Simple critical thinking suggests that this claim is most likely apocryphal. The use of the tama as a communication drum to send messages over long distances should either be backed by reliable sources, or be removed. --MichiHenning (talk) 08:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

"Under ideal conditions, the sound can be understood at 8 km (5.0 mi)" Very few man-made sounds carry 8 km, even in the quietest conditions and over water. The claim that drum can be heard up to 8 km away seems very doubtful. It needs to be backed by a reliable source or removed. --MichiHenning (talk) 07:16, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Have added citations for the distance at which drum messages can be understood; now that "Oral Literature in Africa" is available as ebook under CC-BY, there's no reason not to cite this academic classic. The issues that are cited here are laid to rest in Finnegan's chapter on drum languages. 100 miles an hour amounts to 12 retransmissions per hour, or a message delay of 5 minutes per hop, not unreasonable at all. Also, the drum coding is explained as allusions to tonal languages, resulting in a very high information density. --Openly (talk) 20:22, 3 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... Finnegan and Gleick both cite the same single source (Carrington), who claimed that drum messages can be heard at a distance of three to seven miles. This claim seems extremely dubious. I know from first-hand experience that drums don't carry that far. I've been a participant at large night-time drum circles, with maybe two dozen djembes and three dundun sets going all at once. When I walk away from the circle, I can't hear it very clearly after even a few hundred metres. By the time I'm a kilometer away, I can barely hear it at all. The claim seems grossly inflated. If the drums were indeed loud enough to carry that far, the people who play them would lose their ear drums. A tama is a small drum that is not very loud (not even close to, say, a djembe in volume). There is absolutely no way that a tama could be used to send messages over such distances, even over water on a still night. MichiHenning (talk) 21:50, 3 March 2013 (UTC)


 * More on this… The volume of a jack hammer is 100 dB at 1 m. (A tama is nowhere near as loud, but never mind.) Sound pressure level decreases by 6 db with each doubling of the distance.. The logarithm of 8000 is almost exactly 13 so, at 8000 m distance, we have a sound pressure reduction of 78 dB. Note that this is under ideal conditions, with nothing else interfering with the sound in any way. (No shrubs, trees, etc. between the sound source and the listener.) If we assume such ideal conditions, the jack hammer at that distance would be audible at a level of 22 dB, which is very close to silence. A tama in volume is closer to 90 dB than 100 dB. In that case, we'd be left with 12 dB at 8 km, or 18 dB at 4 km. This just doesn't add up. And we have not yet considered other noises that are closer to the listener and obscure the sound, such as wind noise or bird calls. It is simply impossible for a drum to carry that far. Carrington is wrong, as far as I can tell. He grossly exaggerated the distance at which drums can be heard (and heard clearly enough to still discern any sort of language). MichiHenning (talk) 22:25, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

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Is there any third party objective evidence of this?
Outside of cool stories, why can I not find any evidence of this? I mean we all KNOW this is a thing, we've all heard it since childhood. But yet for all the knowing we have about this topic oddly there's zero evidence of it outside of first party people who are directly financially benefiting from talking about this topic, or explaining it to tourists, etc, and keeping the myth alive. In my country we have drop bears. They're real. I swear. We have drop bear merchandise even. It's a great tourist attraction. But I just lied to you. They aren't real. And there's zero empirical third party evidence of it, you won't find a video of a drop bear in the wild. Yet oddly I can't find a video of drum communication being sent and received by another person who can tell me with any accuracy what was said.

This is up there with those weird 'talking drums of Brazil' that turned out to be a total myth also invented by a guy who wanted to bring home a cool story. Why can I not find two people who know the same "drum language" then get one to record something and the other to tell me what it says? I have on and off been pursuing this since 1996 when I first heard of it but I've yet been able to prove it. Disproving it would also be hard because there's so much financial gain in musical interest surrounding African cultures. And this far into the drop bear story they aren't going to let it go without a fight. But I suspect that this isn't real, and it's just a cool story. 2001:8003:2961:AD00:D872:AD50:B1A7:A343 (talk) 13:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)