Drumming Dialogues: Investigating the Fusion of Sabar Drums and Wolof in Senegal

This paper explores the linguistic aspects of the Sabar drum language from Senegal, focusing on how Sabar drummers encode features of the Wolof language, a non-tonal Niger-Congo language spoken predominantly in Senegal. Unlike drum languages based on tonal languages, the Sabar drum language correlates with the non-tonal Wolof by transposing speech sounds into rhythmic patterns. The study specifically examines the relationship between Sabar drum strokes and the [ATR] (Advanced Tongue Root) feature of Wolof vowels. The findings reveal consistent patterns between Sabar drum strokes and Wolof syllables, indicating a significant correlation between the phonological properties of Wolof vowels and Sabar rhythms. This research contributes to the understanding of non-tonal drum languages and their role in cultural communication systems.