Today the children learnt about one of West Africa’s most well know drums – the djembe drum. We learnt that drums were used in rural Africa more than 700 years ago to communicate messages to faraway villages. These messages varied from celebratory higher pitched tones, to more solemn, lower bass notes spreading news of danger. We spent time carefully listening to examples of different sounds this drum and guessed what they are communicating. The children also explored some percussion instruments for themselves to recreate a piece of music communicating a special message to the rest of the class.