IDNO

LS.139257.TC1

Description

On Catalogue Card: Uganda. 50. Uganda. 123. 48.33, 34.
King's drummer.
- Royal Drum.
(For musical instruments in general, see Drawers [blank]).

Documentary photograph of a Royal Drum, now in the care of the MAA, reference ROS 1920.316, and described as "Royal drum decorated with cowrie shells and triangular designs in red and black glass beads. Around the top is a beaded band with four beaded vertical projections, terminating in hair tufts, possibly monkey tails."
The photograph was probably made by John Roscoe in Uganda prior to Roscoe donating it to the MAA in 1907. [Description from Object record ROS 1920.316, JD 10/11/2022]

Place

E Africa; Uganda

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

?Roscoe, John R.

Collector / Expedition

Roscoe, John R.

Date

?1884 - 1907

Collection Name

Teaching Slide Collection

Source

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Biographical Information: "John Roscoe (1861–1932) was an Anglican missionary to East Africa. He conducted anthropological data collection of the Africans he encountered on mission.
Roscoe was born in 1861, during the height of the Victorian era. Roscoe's career heavily echoed the Victorian notion of improving natives under British rule. He studied civil engineering before joining the Anglican Church Missionary Society. In 1884, on mission, he travelled to what became the Uganda Protectorate, and lived there among several African tribes until 1909. From his experiences in Africa, Roscoe wrote Twenty-Five Years in East Africa, which was published in 1921. He intended the book to be an anthropological reference for Britons." [Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roscoe, JD 20/06/2018]

Context: To be included in the Museum's guidebook, and described as "The last years of the nineteenth century were marked by dramatic change in the Kingdom of Buganda (Uganda). A period of civil war was followed by the ascendancy of chiefs affiliated with Christian missionaries, and the Uganda Agreement of 1900 which created a British protectorate. MAA's collections from the period came through John Roscoe (1861-1932), a prominent missionary who went on to study indigenous tradition and write essentially anthropological works. His 1911 book, The Baganda, is widely regarded as the best early survey of customary life, but it owed much to important writings by Apolo Kagwa, Roscoe's friend, and one of the Church Missionary Society's earliest converts. Kagwa was Katikiro or Prime Minister of Buganda and for seventeen years Regent in place of the young heir. He and his secretary, Ham Mukasa, travelled to England for the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. Kagwa visited Roscoe in Cambridge and gave seventeen items to the Museum, including the brass necklet, which would have been worn by one of the King's guards, while on duty in the royal enclosure. In nineteenth century Buganda, drums had a multiplicity of uses including announcing births, deaths and the call to war. Among important regalia were ninety-three mujaguzo, royal drums, of which Roscoe obtained one. These were kept in a royal drum house, and played suspended above the ground. Today clans continue to be distinguished by distinctive drum tattoos (mubala), as are the various Christian denomations, which use drums to summon worshippers to church." [Information from record 1920.316/Roscoe, JD 20/06/2018]