Akan Drum

The drum is made from two species of wood that are native to sub-Saharan Africa, Baphia and Cordia africana. The latter fine-grained hardwood is known for its ability to be carved and its resonance, which makes it suited to musical instruments. The drumskin came from a deer hide and was stretched over the wooden structure using vegetable fibre.

The drum was made in the Ghana region of West Africa between 1700 and 1745, and is presumed to have travelled to America on board a slave ship. As enslaved people had either been prisoners of war or kidnapped from their homes, they wouldn't have been able to carry any personal possessions. So it is presumed that the drum was either brought by a member of the crew or possibly by a son of the African chief who had sold the enslaved people for transportation. To exercise their human property, the slave traders would "dance the slaves". It is supposed that this was why the drum was transported. The word Akan refers to the culture in what is today Ghana and includes the Akwamu, Bono, Akyem, Fante, Asante and Akuapem people. • Illustration — The Old Plantation, ca. 1785–1795. Late 18th-century watercolour showing enslaved people dancing, with a banjo and drum, on a South Carolina plantation. This particular drum was obtained in Virginia by the Rev. Clerk on behalf of the Anglo-Irish scientist Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane had travelled through Jamaica and had observed at first hand enslaved people playing instruments including those that were to evolve into the banjo. Sloane gathered examples of the tools of slavery and other artifacts which included this drum. Clerk and Sloane thought erroneously that this drum was made by Native Americans. Sloane's collection is a founding collection of the British Museum, his collection was purchased by the British government in 1753. The drum is still displayed at the British Museum as part of the "Sloane collection". Sloane's catalogue records this item as "drum made of a hollowed tree carved the top being brac'd wt. peggs & thongs wt. the bottom hollow from Virginia". In 1906, curators at the British Museum realised that the drum could not have been created by Native Americans, but must have been made in Africa. In the 1970s, it became possible to use expertise from Kew Gardens to determine that the wood was grown in Africa. The drum is thought to have originally been made for a musician in an African chief's orchestra.