Sanza Sounouh (2017)
The drum is the Beyoncé of the percussion family, that is, the most famous and prolific relative, so to speak, and the one by which so much is measured. Drums drive and keep the rhythm, they keep time and let us know when the mood is changing and when it’s time to change a movement in dance. They are featured across genres of music, across artforms and craft, and because they are one of the oldest instruments, they are woven into our collective history as human beings. The importance of music to our experience on earth is passed down in the knowledge that we have been doing it for millennia! The oldest drums are from Neolithic cultures around 5,500 BC, that is, about 8,000 years ago.
Today’s song is featured on a record compiled by German DJ and producer Jan Schulte, curiously named the Tropical Drums of Deutschland. While Germany, where most artists on the compilation are from, isn’t known for its tropical temperatures, the featured drums have been all over the world and stood the test of time, so perhaps in this case the artists tell the instrument’s story and recall its travels around the globe. The making of music is such an ephemeral experience, an inexplicable meeting of the material and the immaterial, so one doesn’t have to go to the tropics to imagine what they might sound and feel like. That’s the power of storytelling, to transport oneself by means of the imagination and to call dreams and memories into being. Sanza’s “Sounouh” sounds like a song from a distant land that used to be home. The voices singing in unison, the progression and growing intensity of the drums, tell a beautiful, passionate story that traverses language and physical barriers.
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