There's more to this story,this is the mundane version-I'm still thinking about it.
My youngest son asked me to keep a lookout for a nice drum,he drums with friends and has a small
djembe.I go to auctions,garage sales,car boot sales looking for books,records,old instruments,old hand
made things I like old stuff.Anyway was recently at an auction when this drum turned up and I ended up
getting it without knowing anything about it,Turns out it's from Uganda I don't think it's as old as the ones
in the article but it's not a recent one either,you can tell it's old,it has the fetishes inside(untill I read the
article I thought it had been damaged) It's discription at the auction was (old african drum circa 1900)
there were many items from africa from around the same era that belonged to a collection from a
deceased estate.
My son loves it because of it's uniqueness and authentic origins plus it has a great sound.
Here's some info and pics I found on the web about these drums.
Two drums from a set of tuned drums or drum chime (entenga), Uganda, ca. 1910. Played at the royal
court of the Kabaka, the traditional ruler of Buganda, a region of Uganda. As many as 15 such drums are
played together, tuned so that one can hear a melody. Inside of each, an unidentified fetish rattles
around. Because artifacts collected on African expeditions at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century had
to be carried out of the interior by porters, the tendency was to collect smaller drums, making this large
pair particularly rare. The drums, carved from heavy logs, are covered with ox hide that is laced together
with about 300-feet of twisted thong. Inside the drums are fetishes, which, according to James Blades
(Percussion Instruments and Their History), "are often placed inside the body of the drum before the skin
is stretched across the opening. These embellishments vary as they conform to the prevailing belief and
include skulls, bones, shells, sacred stones, or part of an organ from an animal previously slain to supply
the covering for the drum. In such a case, the instrument is subject to various taboos, sometimes so
severe that no-one dares to look into the drum before it is covered."
