A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter II-3:  The Origins of Dagbon Before Naa Gbewaa

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The Dagbamba invasion of Ghana; the conquest of the indigenous peoples; Tɔhiʒee, Nimbu, Ʒipopora, Kumtili, Naa Gbewaa, Naa Ʒirli



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Supplementary material



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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Introduction:  issues and problems of the origins talks

Namo-Naa Issahaku:  how the Dagbamba come to their present land

Palo-Naa Isaa:  Tɔhiʒee, Nimbu, and the early chiefs

Nyologu Lun-Naa Issahaku:  Ʒipopora and the Gurumas

Interpretation of the origins talks and sacrifices:  chiefs' mothers' house as tindanas

Naa Gbewaa:  the separation of the tribes

Differences or discrepancies in drumming talks

Explanation of how drummers merge and combine generations in genealogies

The importance to traditon in learning and teaching correctly

Conclusion



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Proverbs and Sayings

If you try to follow a snake to see its ears, you will be tired.

If there is no fear, then what is darkness?

A cow that is in the house, no one fears its horns; but a cow that is in the bush, even if it has no horns, they fear it.

If a child is arguing with old people's talks, there is no benefit.

There is a limit where you will take this talk and end.

Learning drumming is like going to school.

If you are asking too much, you will come to mix it up with lies.

If a talk is small and it's good, it's better than it will be plenty and it will be useless.

As for truth, it is never small.

Truth always goes forward, and lies always come back.

Truth doesn't finish, but as for lies, they finish.

It is the mother's side talks that eat a human being.

Our drumming talks are on the part of our Dagbamba chiefs, and this is what we are holding.

This drumming is what our fathers asked to know, and they put it down for us.

Our drumming is different from stories.

“Chieftaincy doesn't know anything.”  If you have people, and those who are not good people do something bad, and those who do good are there, then you will take those who are good to add to those who have done bad.  And you have not seen anyone's fault:  that is Namʒishɛli.

I have no child.  My child is my brother.

In our drumming custom, we don't show that a Yaa-Naa has no child.

Someone will not love somebody more than himself.

Between a mother and father, the mother's talk is stronger than the father's.

Everything, when it's going to happen, it starts in a small way.

It is better they throw spears at you than they tell lies about you.

These talks we talk, we learn them from our fathers, and we were not there at that time.

Tradition is:  “I got up, and my father said this.”

The meat you meet inside your father's kitchen is what you eat.

Drumming is just like a classroom.

Those who talk, it is not that they don't know.  They know, but it is the way they know it.

It is good that you hear about something, and you go to that place and ask of it.

Every drummer has the extent he has learned.

It is good that you hear about something, and you go to that place and ask of it.

You will go to see the place, and you will meet the old people of the town, and they will show you.

Our way is:  knowledge is more than one another.

Nobody will talk this talk and it will become one.

You need patience to learn the talks of drumming.

When they sing the Samban' luŋa, every drummer has the way he will pass from this section or this chief to the talk of another chief.  Someone will talk and curve the talks, and someone will talk and jump some parts, and someone will come and add some styles to his talk to make it nice.  It's just like the way we beat the drums.  Someone will beat a drum straightforward, and someone will be beating and changing, and someone will beat a dance and mix another dance inside it.

As these small differences are there, it is still one talk.

You are joining the family.

If anybody gets sense, he gets it from somewhere, and he takes it to his hometown, or he will be in his hometown and the sense will come from some place and reach him.

No one knows the ways of drumming more than a drummer.

If somebody doesn't know something and he is going to do it, he is just going to do it with I-don't-know doing.


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