The Cultural Semantics of Yoruba Drum Poetry

Abstract The inevitable incursion of modernity and technology in post-colonial African Yoruba societies is rendering the nobility and royalty attached to drum poetry among the ancient Yoruba people irrelevant, as understanding the meaning of drum poetry marks the nobility and royal inclination of the decipherer. This article reviews previous studies on drum poetry/literature with participant observation/field investigation used in the collection of data. It taxonomizes drum poetry into sacred and secular. It also draws comparisons to and finds similarities with how humans and drums communicate. This paper arrives at the conclusion that tone and tonal marks within situational contexts are the hallmarks of the semantic interpretation of drum poetry