Cameroon

"An Ewondo church leader in rural Cameroon uses a speech surrogate ('talking drum') to summon his church to twice-weekly meetings. The speech surrogate is produced on a 2-tone hollow log drum. The drummed church summonses are analyzed as a paradigm of tripartite transactions with social, communicative, and aesthetic aspects. In addition, they are analyzed as a community-based 'enactment' and as a specialized form of 'reality construction' through drummed language."