Asante-style drum

African, 18th century AD
From Virginia, south-eastern North America

'This drum is an example of how the African influence spread all over the world and why there are so many objects in the museum influenced by Africa. It wasn't just people the slave traders brought to the American colonies but their art and culture too. The drum was made in Africa but travelled to America and became part of African-American history. Africa is all over the museum because it has had such a huge effect on many different cultures all over the world.' Carl Baugh, of Jamaican origin

This Asante-style drum originated in West Africa and was collected in Virginia probably between 1730 and 1745. It was probably brought from Africa to America on the middle passage of a slave trading voyage. The voyages typically had three passages; the first to Africa, carrying goods, the second or middle from Africa to the American colonies carrying slaves, and the home passage carrying trade goods back. The drum may have been owned by an officer or the captain of an unknown British ship sailing out of Bristol or Liverpool, rather than an African.

The drum today symbolizes the importance of music in African-America, both now and at the time of the slave trade. American colonists tried during the seventeenth century to enslave Native Americans but because of Native vulnerability to Old World diseases such as flu and smallpox, Africans were instead imported as slaves. In the eighteenth century African-American slaves sometimes escaped into coastal wetlands and occasionally intermarried with Native Americans. The United States today has a significant population of people descended from both Africans and Natives.

The drum is made of wood (Cordia and Baphia varieties, both native to Africa), vegetable fibre and deer-skin. It was collected by a Reverend Mr Clerk on behalf of Sir Hans Sloane, founder of the British Museum. Sir Hans Sloane entered the drum in his catalogue as a 'drum made of a hollowed tree carved the top being brac'd wt. peggs & thongs wt. the bottom hollow from Virginia'. It is one of the earliest known surviving African-American objects.

J.C.H. King, First peoples, first contacts: (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)