The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth
by Michael Spitzer · 31 Mar 2021 · 632pp · 163,143 words
North Africa. Another reason, it is said, is that North Americans banned drums in order to stop slaves in plantations communicating with each other with ‘talking drums’. The same theory explains that the music of South America is rich in polymetres and marimbas because most of their slaves originated south of West
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
by James Gleick · 1 Mar 2011 · 855pp · 178,507 words
becoming aware of itself. Some information technologies were appreciated in their own time, but others were not. One that was sorely misunderstood was the African talking drum. * * * ♦ And added drily: “In this role, electronic man is no less a nomad than his Paleolithic ancestors.” 1 | DRUMS THAT TALK (When a Code Is
…
Not a Code) Across the Dark Continent sound the never-silent drums: the base of all the music, the focus of every dance; the talking drums, the wireless of the unmapped jungle. —Irma Wassall (1943)♦ NO ONE SPOKE SIMPLY ON THE DRUMS. Drummers would not say, “Come back home,” but rather
…
with the bugle and the bell, used to transmit a small set of messages: attack; retreat; come to church. But they could not conceive of talking drums. In 1730 Francis Moore sailed eastward up the Gambia River, finding it navigable for six hundred miles, all the way admiring the beauty of the
…
one in the world could communicate as much, as fast, as far as unlettered Africans with their drums. By the time Captain Allen discovered the talking drums in 1841, Samuel F. B. Morse was struggling with his own percussive code, the electromagnetic drumbeat designed to pulse along the telegraph wire. Inventing a
…
. He noticed how loquacious a good drummer had to be. He finally published his discoveries about drums in 1949, in a slim volume titled The Talking Drums of Africa. In solving the enigma of the drums, Carrington found the key in a central fact about the relevant African languages. They are tonal
…
and nine, particularly prone to confusion, are spoken as fife and niner. The extra syllables perform the same function as the extra verbosity of the talking drums. After publishing his book, John Carrington came across a mathematical way to understand this point. A paper by a Bell Labs telephone engineer, Ralph Hartley
…
Lokele youth practicing the drums less and less, schoolboys who did not even learn their own drum names.♦ He regretted it. He had made the talking drums a part of his own life. In 1954 a visitor from the United States found him running a mission school in the Congolese outpost of
…
Diffusion, 1974), 66, quoted in Walter J. Ong, Interfaces of the Word, 95. ♦ “I MUST HAVE BEEN GUILTY MANY A TIME”: John F. Carrington, The Talking Drums of Africa (London: Carey Kingsgate, 1949), 19. ♦ EVEN THE LIMITED DICTIONARY OF THE MISSIONARIES: Ibid., 33. ♦ “AMONG PEOPLES WHO KNOW NOTHING OF WRITING”: Robert Sutherland
…
, “Transmission of Information,” Bell System Technical Journal 7 (1928): 535–63. ♦ HE SAW LOKELE YOUTH PRACTICING THE DRUMS LESS AND LESS: John F. Carrington, The Talking Drums of Africa, 83. ♦ A VISITOR FROM THE UNITED STATES FOUND HIM: Israel Shenker, “Boomlay,” Time, 22 November 1954. 2. THE PERSISTENCE OF THE WORD ♦ “ODYSSEUS
…
Our Brains. New York: Norton, 2010. Carrington, John F. A Comparative Study of Some Central African Gong-Languages. Brussels: Falk, G. van Campenhout, 1949. ———. The Talking Drums of Africa. London: Carey Kingsgate, 1949. ———. La Voix des tambours: comment comprendre le langage tambouriné d’Afrique. Kinshasa: Centre Protestant d’Éditions et de Diffusion
…
, Brace, 1970. Murray, K. M. E. Caught in the Web of Words. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978. Mushengyezi, Aaron. “Rethinking Indigenous Media: Rituals, ‘Talking’ Drums and Orality as Forms of Public Communication in Uganda.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2003): 107–17. Nagel, Ernest, and James R
…
of Literacy.” Canadian Psychology 27, no. 2 (1986): 109–21. Ong, Walter J. “This Side of Oral Culture and of Print.” Lincoln Lecture (1973). ———. “African Talking Drums and Oral Noetics.” New Literary History 8, no. 3 (1977): 411–29. ———. Interfaces of the Word. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977. ———. Orality and
…
.2 in mathematical computation origins of thinking and words representing, 2.1, 3.1 Adams, Brooks Adams, Frederick Adams, Henry Aeschylus African languages; see also talking drums Aharonov, Dorit Airy, George Biddell “Algebra for Theoretical Genetics, An” (Shannon), 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 algebra of logic, prl.1, 8.1; see
…
, 7.3 as stochastic process symbolic logic to describe systems of system elements, 7.1, 7.2 in Twitter, epl.1, epl.2 see also talking drums; telegraphy; telephony; transmission of information compact disc, prl.1, 8.1, epl.1 complexity, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5, 12
…
names, 14.1, 14.2 Donne, John Doob, Joseph L. Dowd, Maureen Doyle, Arthur Conan Dretske, Fred, 11.1, epl.1, ind.1 drums; see talking drums Dupuy, Jean-Pierre, epl.1, epl.2, epl.3 Dyer, Harrison Gray echo Eckart, Carl Eckert, W. H. economics Babbage’s research on, 4.1
…
English language, 1.1, 1.2, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 in genetic code information content and in language of talking drums, 1.1, 1.2 mathematical modeling of in oral literature predictability and, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 12.1 to prevent telegraph errors quantifying
…
Numbers, (Babbage) Tables for the Improvement of Navigation (Briggs) Table to find the Height of the Pole (Briggs) Tafelen van Interest (Stevin) Talbot, William Fox talking drums, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12
…
Talking Drums of Africa, The (Carrington) Tawell, John Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre telegraphy, prl.1, 1.1, 4.1 address codes, 14.1, 14.2 Baudot code
Culture works: the political economy of culture
by Richard Maxwell · 15 Jan 2001 · 268pp · 112,708 words
already recording instruments meant for outdoors playback. The rhythms we have inherited come from tonal, oral languages whose culture is archived within the beat. The talking drum and the phrase “drum talk,” at one point in the United States were literal statements. The body of the player is to be evident, readily
Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson · 15 Nov 2016 · 322pp · 88,197 words
as a kind of informational code, as Samuel Morse discovered in the invention of the telegraph. The very first long-distance wireless networks were the “talking drums” of West Africa, percussive instruments that were tuned to mimic the pitch contours of African languages. Complex messages warning of impending invasions, or sharing news
…
mechanical point of view”: Michael H. Adler, The Writing Machine (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), 5. The very first long-distance: For more on the talking drums, see James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (New York: Vintage, 2012). “The Ballet began”: Richard Rhodes, Hedy’s Folly: The Life
…
Claude glass, 265, 265–66 clocks as the basis for automata, 6 cloves, 111–13, 122–25, 140 codes cycle of encoding and decoding, 92 “talking drums” of West Africa, 91 telegraph, 91 Coen, Jan Pieterszoon, 119 coffee. See also coffeehouses caffeine, 246–48 taste of, 248 utilitarian purposes of, 248 “Vertue
Lonely Planet Jamaica
by Lonely Planet
elected members headed by a ‘colonel.’ The locals attempt to keep alive their lore and legends, and still bring out their abengs (goat horns) and talking drums on occasion, but many of the youth are emigrating to the cities. Visitors expressing interest in the fascinating history of the Windward Maroons will be
The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life
by Robert Wright · 1 Jan 1994 · 604pp · 161,455 words
miles a day. But that’s nothing compared to the Ashanti, who sent data hundreds of miles in a few minutes with a network of “talking drums” that could summon political leaders, warn of danger, mobilize the military, announce deaths, or (on a less urgent note) broadcast proverbs. Differences in tone had
…
roads: See Adams (1997), p. 123. Incan error suppression: Adams (1997), p. 124. rate of Incan data travel: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1989), vol. 6, p. 277. “talking drums”: Service (1978), pp. 356–57. Bronze Age: Bronze was also in use among pre-urban peoples in Thailand and the Balkans. In general, archaeologists put
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
by Robert Wright · 28 Dec 2010
miles a day. But that’s nothing compared to the Ashanti, who sent data hundreds of miles in a few minutes with a network of “talking drums” that could summon political leaders, warn of danger, mobilize the military, announce deaths, or (on a less urgent note) broadcast proverbs. Differences in tone had
…
roads: See Adams (1997), p. 123. Incan error suppression: Adams (1997), p. 124. rate of Incan data travel: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1989), vol. 6, p. 277. “talking drums”: Service (1978), pp. 356–57. Bronze Age: Bronze was also in use among pre-urban peoples in Thailand and the Balkans. In general, archaeologists put
Artificial Whiteness
by Yarden Katz
. Amitai Ziv, “This Israeli Face-Recognition Startup Is Secretly Tracking Palestinians,” Haaretz, July 15, 2019. 67. Nabil Hassein, “Against Black Inclusion in Facial Recognition,” Digital Talking Drum, August 15, 2017. Regarding Buolamwini’s call for “inclusion,” Ruha Benjamin similarly notes: “While inclusion and accuracy are worthy goals in the abstract, given the
Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
by Nicholas Carr · 28 Jan 2025 · 231pp · 85,135 words
physical documents.16 The ancient Greeks constructed a system of lookout towers and fire beacons to send bulletins across their empire. West Africans communicated through talking drums, using subtle alterations in the tone and rhythm of beats to transmit messages. In the late eighteenth century, the French started sending communiqués through an
The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market
by Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane · 11 Apr 2004 · 187pp · 55,801 words
information and work are inseparable, any technology that changes how we use information has the potential to reorganize how work is done. Early information technologies—talking drums, the telegraph, and telephone—increased the speed at which information could be transmitted, and, in some cases, the gains were remarkable. Just before the advent