The Last Samurai

Yamamoto said: There was something about this, the idea of percussion in its purest form coming through the air & at the same time over water, and at last hitting rock & coming back, you know coming through this very thin medium & also over a denser one & against a very solid one—& I thought I just have to hear this. I don’t know how but I’ve got to.

For the next few years whenever Yamamoto met someone from Africa he would describe this episode in Drums over Africa but no one seemed to know about percussion in its purest form and the rock and water and air.

When he was 19 it was arranged that he would spend six months studying in Paris. One of the other students was from Chad, and Yamamoto asked again about percussion in its purest form and the student was rather annoyed, because whenever people thought of African music all they thought of was drums.

Drums drums drums, said this friend, if anything the most important element in African music (insofar as it made sense to generalise about African music which it did not) was the voice.

Don’t talk to me about the voice, I said, I am not interested in the voice but in percussion in its purest form, & I told him about the drums & the lake, & I said it was a 20-day trek from a place that used to be called St. Pierre

& he said he did know of a place that used to be called that but it couldn’t be the one because the people in that area had a totally different kind of music, they have these professional musicians, these griots who sing ballads and nothing like what I had described would happen there

& I said But is it a desert and is there a lake

& he said Yes but it can’t possibly be there

& then he said Forget about Africa, you don’t know what you want, I’m getting together some people to put on Boulez’s Eclat/Multiples stick around & you can have the piano

ST: So you went to Chad.

Yamamoto: That’s right.

Yamamoto said that when he finally found the place there was something almost magical about it—the lake was there, and the hill, and the hut a little way apart, and the people who would play a piece of music with six or seven rhythms all at once. The things they played while he was there melted away over the lake, and he never got to hear the other drums.

Yamamoto: I’d managed to set aside two months, which was practically unheard of; got to Chad; incredible hassle getting out to the village, isn’t there some movie about a guy who tries to take Caruso up the Amazon?

ST: Yes?

Yamamoto: With Klaus Kinski?

ST: Yes?

Yamamoto: Well, that gives you some idea, and then to top it all I get maybe two weeks, maximum, in the village with the drums and then Kaboom! It’s gone.

ST: This is the part a lot of people find hard to believe.

Yamamoto: I know, I know, how could I even think of going two months without practising? Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself.

Yamamoto had been staying in the village and one day he bicycled over to the mountains to see some rock paintings, taking a boy from the village as his guide. He had noticed a lot of soldiers around but he had never had the time to be interested in politics. When they got back to the village everyone in it was dead. The boy said they would kill him if they found him and Yamamoto had to help him get away. At first Yamamoto said there was nothing he could do but the boy said you’ve got to help me.

They were alone in a village full of dead bodies. Yamamoto said Don’t you have to beat the drum for them? Or is that only for the dying?

The boy said I am too young, and then he said No, you are right.

He went to the hut. Yamamoto followed him. Inside were seven drums, but five were almost eaten away by termites, and one was quite badly damaged, and only one still stood upright. The boy took it from the hut and set it up on the shore of the lake. It seemed to be made from the trunk of some hardwood tree, though Yamamoto had never seen anything but low twisted bushes of scrub in the area.

The boy tilted the drum back against a stand, and when it was late afternoon he began to strike the drum very lightly with a stick. When the sun was close to the horizon he struck eight louder blows, and then, when the sun dropped below the horizon, he brought the stick down on the drumhead with all his might. Then he held the stick at his side and waited for several seconds, but no sound came back over the water. Again he struck the drum, and again the sound died away over the water and did not return. Then he struck it a third time so hard the drum quivered and trembled, but no sound came back and he dropped the stick in the sand.

No, he said, it will not come back, there is nothing to come back to—

And he said that they must cut it open and he would hide inside and Yamamoto would take the drum with him when he went.

Yamamoto said this was a stupid plan, the boy would be safer just—

But he couldn’t think of some way the boy would be safer.