AGED CONGO STREET DRUMMER HAS ALL OF THEM BEAT

     Leopoldville, the Congo. -- It was the most beautiful and spine-tingling African drumming I had ever heard. I stopped dead in my tracks - listening intently - trying to figure out where it was coming from.
     The Boulevard Albert was dark and deserted. Down the street about 500 yards I could see the lights of my hotel – the Regina. I was on my way there from the Hotel Memling where several of us correspondents had stayed up past midnight rehashing the day’s events.
     As best I could tell, the throbbing drumbeats seemed to be coming from my side of the street – some place between where I was standing and the hotel. I started walking again, very slowly, past the darkened, shuttered shop windows. The drumming grew louder.
     Suddenly I was upon it. I had come abreast of a clothing store whose display window was dimly lit by a single bulb in the corner. It was the only unshuttered shop on the street. In its recessed doorway, sitting on a dirty straw mat and clasping a drum tightly between his spindly legs, was the night watchman.
     He was an old man, dressed in rags, but his hands were swift and supple as he performed his magic on the drum. I must have stood staring at him for a minute or two, hypnotized by his strange and primitive music. Then I moved to the front of the store window, pretending to be interested in the display of shirts and ties.
     For a full 20 minutes I remained there motionless and listened raptly to the old man play. He was a master of his art. In his youth he must have been one of the great tribal drummers of his day.
     The rhythm was slow, then fast – muted, then crashingly and wildly insistent. He seemed to be pouring out his soul through the medium of the drum. I felt like an eavesdropper – standing there intruding upon his privacy while he beat out his inner-most secrets to the dark and lonely night.
     It was almost with a sense of relief that I finally heard the drumming die. The old man set the instrument carefully aside and slowly stood up. He picked up a rusty tin can next to him and shuffled out onto the sidewalk and over to the grass strip next to the street. There he squatted down, built a small fire out of some trash paper and kindling and heated the food in his can.
     I turned away and began walking towards the hotel. I glanced back once and saw him hunkering over the small fire, eating his dinner.
     ‘There,’ I thought to myself with the utmost sincerity, ‘is one of the world’s truly great musicians.’
     For, you see, the drum the old man had been using was not really a drum at all – it was nothing more than an old discarded cardboard box.

     —J. Michael Mahoney, The Atlanta Constitution, October 23, 1961.

     (Also Quotation #113 in "TOPSY TURVY, A Book for
     All in One", by J. Michael Mahoney.)