‘Enduring Rhythms’ Tells a Tale of Communications

Why are a slit drum from Zaire and the tap shoes of Savion Glover within a few beats of each other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

It’s because both are the instruments of a remarkable rhythmic and musical tradition, a heritage that is tracked across centuries and oceans in a modest but frequently fascinating show at the Met. The drum, called a “nekpokpo,” is still used in Africa to accompany traditional dances; in the past it also fulfilled a vital communications function, relaying coded messages and warnings that traveled clearly for miles.

And anyone who has seen Glover in the Broadway hit “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk” knows that this astounding young dancer’s tap shoes are also a communications tool, pounding out a furious and joyful percussive message no less urgent than those coded African warnings.

A pair of Glover’s shoes from “Noise/Funk” sits in its own display case at the end of “Enduring Rhythms: African Musical Instruments and the Americas,” running through March 30 at the Met, while the Zairian slit drum, a 4-foot-long instrument carved in the shape of a cow with an opening along the ridge of its back, comes at the beginning. What lies in between is the story of how African music was transmuted into something distinctly African American, in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Of course, it’s also the story of the forced African diaspora, and of how a resilient musical culture survived the deprivations and oppression of slavery. In fact, that slit drum--actually more of a gong, with four tones to imitate the pitch of human speech--is just the kind of instrument that was suppressed by slaveholders in the American colonies. With its ability to sound the call of slave revolt across the miles, it was simply too dangerous to exist.

Other instruments, too, were either destroyed in the Americas or tragically left behind by the enslaved Africans. The show has numerous examples of drums, sometimes decorated with delicate carvings and embossing, as well as carved ivory horns; neither kind of instrument seems to have had an early parallel among the black population of North America.

How, then, did the American slaves make music? One answer, suggested less in the exhibition than in “Noise/Funk,” is that they turned to whatever was at hand: Perhaps the most rousing single moment in the Broadway show is not a tap routine but a “drum” duet on buckets and pans so rhythmically powerful that it brings down the house. Musically, as in other ways, oppressed African Americans were good--as “Noise/Funk” puts it--at making “som’thin’ from nuthin’.”

Other answers are found in “Enduring Rhythms” itself. In some cases, especially among escaped slaves of South America, the instruments were indeed re-created as closely as possible. And three large Haitian drums used in religious rituals often centered on a skilled drummer who could summon the spirits to a public gathering.

More typically, in North America, at least, African musical traditions and rituals merged with Christian European ones, becoming more acceptable as they adopted these “civilized” trappings. Amazingly, key elements of African musical life--including rich overlays of different rhythms and a call-and-response singing technique that invited group participation--survived over the centuries.

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For visitors to “Enduring Rhythms,” the easiest and best way to understand the African origins of so many contemporary sounds is to make use of a free audio guide narrated by jazz pianist Billy Taylor. (The guide is available at the desk in the museum’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, where “Enduring Rhythms” is on view.) Whether we’re looking at gourds covered with a net of small beads, drums with attached metal plates that provide a buzzing accompaniment to the drumbeat, or ceramic pots used as drums by Nigerian women, our experience is enhanced by listening on headphones to the sounds they make. In fact, one only wishes that the 20-minute audio tour were longer, with many more examples of African, and African American, music and rhythms.

Toward the end of the show, as we reach Glover’s worn-out tap shoes (the word “burnt” has been written inside the shoes to indicate they’ve outlived their usefulness), the audio guide does provide a segment on the remarkable dancer, and we hear both his comments and the shifting rhythms and tones of the tap technique he calls “hittin’.”

He developed the technique, he explains, two or three years ago, when he permanently abandoned more conventional styles of tap. No more “flap, flap, shuffle, step” for him, says Glover. “There’s some hittin’ goin’ on over here.”

Yes, there is. It’s yet another step in the wondrous evolution of rhythms imported to these shores more than 400 years ago.