The first thing that reaches you is the ground. Before you have worked out what you are hearing, you feel it through your feet — a dozen drums struck together, hard, by men who have been doing this since they were boys. The ingoma of Burundi is the most famous thing this country has given the world, and hearing it where it belongs, rather than on a stage abroad, is one of the great reasons to come.
It is also the most misunderstood. What looks like a joyful performance began as an instrument of government, and almost nothing about it is decorative. The drum has a body with named parts, a family that owns the right to play it, rules about when it may sound, and a place on the national flag it later lost. This is the full story, and where to go to hear it.
The drum was the state
In the kingdom of Burundi, drums were never entertainment. They belonged to the Mwami — the king — and he decided who played them, where, and on what occasion. A drum pattern carried instruction across the hills: the opening of the agricultural season, a royal decision, a death, a call to arms. The drums were how the centre spoke to the country, and controlling them was the same thing as holding legitimate power.
At the centre of that system stood the Karyenda, the most sacred drum of all, which stood for the king himself. It was not played for audiences. Its role was closer to that of a crown than an instrument, and the tradition is traced back to Ntare Rushatsi, remembered as the first king of Burundi.
The men entrusted with the drums were the Abatimbo: drummers by inheritance, belonging to particular families, who were officers of the kingdom rather than musicians. Their descendants are the men you watch at Gishora today.
The anatomy of an ingoma
This is the part most visitors never learn, and it changes how you listen. A Burundian drum is not a shell with a skin on it. Every part has a name in Kirundi, and nearly all of those names describe a woman's body — the drum is understood as a mother, and its sound as birth.
- Inda y'ingoma — "the belly of the drum". The hollowed interior where the sound resonates, likened to the womb.
- Icahi — the cowhide stretched across the top, the surface that is struck. When it finally splits, drummers say "ingoma iravyaye" — "the drum has given birth".
- Amabere y'ingoma — "the breasts of the drum". The wooden pegs driven round the rim that hold the hide taut, named for the nourishment they represent.
- Mu bwami bw'ingoma — "the kingdom of the drum". The central zone of the skin, struck most often; the hair wears away there until it is completely smooth.
- Mu kibenga — "the abyss". The ring around that centre, which shapes the resonance.
- Uruhanga rw'ingoma — "the forehead of the drum". The outer edge of the skin, completing the balance of the sound, named as part of a face.
- Umukaba or umukenyerero — "the belt", the dark band near the base, echoing the belt of a woman's traditional dress.
- Umukondo w'ingoma — "the navel". The foot the drum stands on: its origin, and its anchorage in the earth.
The sticks have a name too — imirisho y'ingoma — and they are heavy. Watch the drummers' forearms and you will understand why this is a young man's profession practised into old age by a stubborn few.
How a drum is made
The body is cut from a single trunk, traditionally from the umuvugangoma — a name that means, roughly, "the tree that makes the drum speak". It is hollowed by hand, which takes weeks, and the wall thickness decides the voice of the finished drum.
The head is cowhide, soaked, stretched over the opening while wet, and held by the wooden pegs around the rim. As it dries it tightens, and the tension is adjusted peg by peg. A finished drum is heavy enough that carrying it on the head, as the drummers do in procession, is itself an act of strength.
Drum-making is concentrated in particular hills and particular families, and the skill passes down the same way the right to play does.
What you are actually listening to
An ensemble is built in layers. Once you can hear the parts, you cannot unhear them.
- Amashako — the pulse. A continuous, unwavering beat from the outer drums that everything else sits on.
- Ibishikiso — the decoration. Syncopation, fills and answering phrases laid over that pulse.
- Inkiranya — the lead drum, at the centre. It sets the pace, calls the breaks and cues the dancers.
- Karyenda and Rukinzo — the royal drums: sacred rather than rhythmic, carrying the authority of the king.
Nothing is improvised. The patterns are cyclical and fixed, passed on by repetition rather than notation. What sounds like wild energy is a script, performed exactly.
How a performance unfolds
It begins as a procession. The drummers walk in slowly, each carrying his drum on his head, singing as they come. They set the drums in a semicircle around the central one and take position.
Then the lead drummer strikes a slow, deliberate pulse — the invocation, a call to the ancestors. This is the moment to be silent for. It is not the warm-up.
After that it builds and keeps building. The tempo climbs, the layers lock together, and the drummers dance while playing: leaping, swapping places, striking on the way down, one man taking the centre while the others hold the pulse. It ends abruptly, on a cue you will not see coming, in complete silence.
Who is allowed to play
Historically, the drum was the preserve of men, in specific families, descended from the drummers of the royal court. Women took a full part in the dances and ceremonies around it but were not permitted to make or beat the drum.
That rule still holds in most of the tradition, and it is now openly debated in Burundi — by women who want to play, by purists who hold that the restriction is inseparable from what the drum is, and by a younger generation somewhere in between. If the subject comes up while you are there, it is worth listening rather than arriving with a view.
From the kingdom to the nation
Colonial rule broke the system the drums belonged to. Under German and then Belgian administration the monarchy was hollowed out, and once the royal sanctuaries lost their function in government, most of them declined and fell silent.
When Burundi became independent in 1962, the Karyenda went onto the national flag, at the centre of the white disc beside a sorghum plant: the king and the land, in one emblem. When the monarchy was deposed in 1966 the drum was removed from the flag, and the following year three stars took its place. The drum had been the state; now it was heritage.
What survived did so because particular families kept playing. In 2014 UNESCO inscribed the ritual dance of the royal drum on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — recognition that what is performed at Gishora is a continuous tradition rather than a revival.
The drums abroad
Burundi's drummers have become the country's most effective ambassadors, and for many people outside Africa the ingoma is the only Burundian thing they have ever seen.
They have performed at world expositions, at international festivals of African culture, at European jazz festivals and on televised talent shows watched by millions. Belgian audiences have seen them at corporate and cultural events in Brussels, including a Digital Fundraising Day organised with Google. Every one of these appearances does the same thing: an audience that knows nothing about Burundi watches twenty men carry drums on their heads, and leaves knowing one thing about it.
Seeing them at home is a different experience. Abroad, the ensemble is a spectacular act on a stage. At Gishora it is men on the hill their grandfathers played on, performing for a handful of people, in the place the ritual belongs to.
Where to hear them
Gishora is the place to go: a sanctuary on a hill a few kilometres north of Gitega, where the hereditary drummers still play and where the tradition survived the century that silenced the others. A performance has to be arranged in advance — usually a day or two — through a guide, your hotel, or the sanctuary itself. See our guide to the royal site at Gishora for how to get there and what a visit involves.
You may also catch drummers at national celebrations — Independence Day on 1 July above all — at weddings, and at hotels in Bujumbura that lay on performances for guests. Hotel displays are enjoyable and are not the same thing.
If you go
- Dress as you would for a church, not for the beach.
- Stay quiet during the opening invocation.
- Never touch the drums unless you are invited to.
- Ask the lead drummer before filming or recording. The answer is usually yes; asking is the point.
- Agree the fee in advance with whoever arranges the performance, and remember you are paying a group of fifteen or twenty men for their afternoon.
Why it is worth the trouble
Plenty of visitors catch ten minutes of drumming beside a hotel pool and tick it off. What happens at Gishora is something else: the same families, on their own hill, performing a ritual that was once the machinery of a kingdom and is now the clearest statement Burundi makes about itself. Give it the day's notice it needs, and listen to the first slow beats properly — that is the part that is not for you.