Slit drums from Vanuatu
twentieth century
Tall hollowed trunks stand upright in a cluster, each with a long narrow slit down its front and a face carved at the top: huge round eyes, a long nose and sometimes a second face below the first. These are slit drums from the islands of Ambrym and Malekula in Vanuatu, and they are among the first things you see when you reach the Oceania section at the top of the ramp. In their villages they stood in groups on the dancing ground, the largest of them taller than a house, and were struck with wooden clubs so that the sound carried across the sea to neighbouring islands.
Each drum is a single tree trunk, usually breadfruit wood, hollowed out through the slit until the walls are thin enough to ring. Look at the faces, which represent ancestors and are carved in the style of the grade societies of northern Ambrym, where men rose through ranks by sacrificing pigs and commissioning sculptures. The bigger the drum, the higher the grade of the man who ordered it. The lips of the slit, worn smooth by years of beating, show which drums were used most. Different rhythms sent messages, calling people to ceremonies, announcing deaths or warning of danger, and the drums also gave the beat for the masked dances.
Vanuatu was a joint French and British colony until 1980, and French collectors, missionaries and expeditions brought many drums to Paris, first to the Musée de l'Homme and the Musée des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie and then here. The museum gave them one of its most striking installations, standing them together as they would have stood on the village ground. Drums of this kind are still carved in Ambrym today, both for ceremonies and for sale, so what you are looking at is a living tradition rather than a vanished one.
Did You Know? The largest slit drums could be heard on neighbouring islands across the sea, and they still give the beat for dances in Ambrym today.
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