Original Earthtone Painting of an African 'Dondo Drummer', "Dondo Drummer"

A musician dressed in the style of Northern Ghana creates varied tones and rhythms with the dondo drum. His smock, so popular in the area, fans out about him as he whirls to his own beat. Used by Northerners and the Ewe in the Volta Region of Ghana, the dondo is West Africa's famous talking drum that permits tribal chiefs to communicate with distant villages. The drum's hourglass figure is veiled in cords, strung tautly to tune the opposing goatskin drumheads, and the drummer can vary the tone by squeezing the central part. Working in an earth-tone palette, George Blankson Bessa-Simons paints this dynamic image.