Double-headed hourglass drum of West Africa (see Drum, §I, 2(ii)(c)), known principally among the Hausa people of Nigeria, who call the drum kalangu or kalungu (see Hausa music, §§1, 4). It is a variable tension drum, held under the arm and beaten with a hooked stick. The drum is of medium size for an hourglass drum, being about 35 cm long, 17 cm in diameter at each end and 8 cm in diameter at the waist. The past and present patrons of Hausa kalangu drumming are butchers. Originally the drum was associated exclusively with them, but today it is used for drumming not only their praise epithets but also those of boxers and of young people. It is also used to accompany young girls’ dancing and by popular freelance professional musicians such as Alhaji Muhamman Shata. The main additional occasions of performance are at name and marriage ceremonies and during co-operative farm work; in the Sokoto and Zamfara areas the drum is used with single-string Goge bowed lutes (fiddles) and calabash or metal percussion vessels in music and dance of the bori spirit possession cult.
In the performance of praise epithets, the Hausa drum may be used solo but is more often played with a fixed-pitch hourglass drum, dan karbi, and the small kuntuku kettledrum. The dan karbi is strapped to the thigh of the kalangu player, who beats both drums. A smaller version of the kalangu, the karamar kalangu, is played in the market both by amateur freelance musicians, sometimes to promote trade for butchers, and by professional satirists (yan gambara).
Many Nigerian peoples use such hourglass drums to accompany dancing, including the Bole (or Bolewa), Bariba (or Baatonun), Cishingini (or Kambari) and Gbari (who refer to the drum as kalanggual). The Busa and Tyenga (or Kenga) peoples employ the drum for bori dancing at the conclusion of a lengthy funeral feast. The Lela kalangu is used traditionally for drumming on the death of noted warriors and their immediate kin, and the Nupe version of the instrument, the danko, is used together with a very small kalangu-type drum, the munugi, by royal musicians on Muslim festivals, Fridays and other important occasions.
Ames–KingGHM
E.C. Duff and W. Hamilton-Browne: Gazetteer of the Kontagora Province (London, 1920)
P.G. Harris: ‘Notes on Drums and Musical Instruments Seen in Sokoto Province, Nigeria’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, lxii (1932), 105–25, esp. 108
D.W. Ames: ‘Hausa Drums of Zaria’, Ibadan, xxi (1965), 62–80
K. Krieger: ‘Musikinstrumente der Hausa’, Baessler-Archiv, new ser., xvi (1968), 373–430
P. Harper: ‘A Festival of Nigerian Dances’, African Arts, iii/2 (1970), 48–53
P. Newman and E.H. Davidson: ‘Music from the Villages of Northeastern Nigeria’, Asch Records AHM 4532 (1971) [disc notes]
K.A. GOURLAY/ROGER BLENCH