7thconferenceMagazinewide

Charles Town Maroon Council
7th Annual International Maroon Conference
Drums Music and the Maroons
Leroy Mabrak Mattis
The Maroons are from West Africa.
West Africa has the highest level of
Drum Music.They even developed the
Talking Drum.
Ghana has the highest level of music on the
Coast in that they play real Polyphonic Drum
Music which baffles the world even today.
They will use seven drums and play seven
different melodic lines which synchronise and
bring healing to individuals as we only have
two ears and our nervous system has to
process the sound.
Therefore you can be healed or they can make you feel high
naturally. That is what happened to Dave Brubeck when he
visited the West Coast of Africa and he heard AGBAJA. He
came home and had to make TAKE 5 which was a big hit in
the jazz community and in the western world but it was not
his composition.
The Maroons are from the West Coast and mostly from
Ghana, hence they can use their drums to send messages
from hillside to hillside which they used against the British
and they can have entertainment drumming for celebrations
and enjoyment.
Their rich and deep cultural heritage allows
them to just play and understand whatever
they want to play as they are using “drum
language” which snobbish individuals do not
understand and think that they are just
“beating their drums”. In traditional West
Africa drums were played and were never
beaten...
At the classical level of Drum Music the
drums play specific melody lines to achieve
synchronicity. There are AGBAJA & THE
PUBERTY DANCE for example which the musicologists
either hide or do not know about.
The Maroons in Jamaica in this time probably just play
entertaining and celebration drums and rhythms but they
come from a rich musical and cultural background from the
West Coast of Africa.
As Jamaicans we are indeed a blessed country with very
deep musical and cultural roots from the West Coast of
Africa.
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