Burru is an Ashanti-born style of

drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...

ming used in

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

n music.

Description of the rhythm and of the types of drums

"Burru" consists of alternations of a

beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery (c ...

made by one drummer, and another beat by another drummer, like a conversation between two or more people: this pattern is named

call and response Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...

, and can be observed in almost all African-rooted music, such as the first Afro-American music genres like

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

and

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

, among others. Three types of drums were used in most arrangements: they consisted of "Bass", "Fundeh" and "Repeater" drum. All three drums had very important roles: the Bass drum carried the rhythm, the Fundeh drum added syncopation, and the Repeater drum brought in the melody. Occasionally, lyrics would be incorporated as well into songs. They would still follow the "call and response" pattern.

History, origin and meanings of the term

This style of drumming originated in

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...

, and later moved to the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

as a result of the

atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...

; on the

slave plantation A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century. Slavery Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive ...

s, slave masters permitted its continuance as it provided a rhythm for the slaves to work by. The term "burru" originates from the African

Twi language Twi () is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly of the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. Twi has about 17-18 million speakers in total, includ ...

word "bru", meaning to "ravage", "strike" or "destroy", and this term is also present in the Jamaican patois, where it refers to an individual that is a "ruffian". For this reason, it was possibly an insult from one Twi speaking slave or

Coromantee Coromantee, Coromantins, Coromanti or Kormantine (derived from the name of the Ghanaian slave fort Fort Kormantine in the Ghanaian town of Kormantse, Central Ghana) is an English-language term for enslaved people from the Akan ethnic group, ta ...

(an archaic British term to refer to Twi speaking

Akan Akan may refer to: People and languages *Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire *Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people *Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan *Central Tano languages, a language group w ...

slaves from the inland, north of the

Gold Coast Gold Coast may refer to: Places Africa * Gold Coast (region), in West Africa, which was made up of the following colonies, before being established as the independent nation of Ghana: ** Portuguese Gold Coast (Portuguese, 1482–1642) ** Dutch G ...

) to another. The word also refers to an Ashanti kind of drum called

Aburukuwa The Aburukuwa (also known as the Abrukwa) is an open drum of the Akan people and the Asante people of Ghana. It is a high-pitched talking drum used by the Akan people, bottle-shaped with its skin is held on by pegs. It is usually played with ...

, cylindrical in shape, and known in Jamaica as "Burru drum".

How and by who Burru is used

Burru has been used in many ways over the years. This style was at first known as a more aggressive form of drumming, due to the loud and hard beats. However, burru in West Africa was used more as a form of cultural expression, and it would frequently have been used in arrangements called

talking drum The talking drum is an hourglass-shaped drum from West Africa, whose pitch can be regulated to mimic the tone and prosody of human speech. It has two drumheads connected by leather tension cords, which allow the player to change the pitc ...

s. It has also been used in

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...

music, popularised by

Count Ossie Count Ossie, born Oswald Williams (23 April 1926Ancestry.com. Jamaica, Civil Registration Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1878-1995 atabase on-line Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. – 18 October 1976Moskowitz, David V. ...

, and used by artists such as

Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...

References

{{Reflist Drumming Jamaican music