Long ago, when the moon still listened to humans and the river answered by name, there stood a village called Ayanfẹ, resting beside a deep, winding river known as Odo-Ìròyìn—the River of Stories.
The elders said the river was alive. Not with fish alone, but with memory.
One season, the rains delayed, crops withered, and the village drums fell silent. No festival was announced, no warning beaten for danger, no rhythm to guide the people’s hearts. The village’s sacred talking drum—Gángan Aláròyé—had vanished.
Some said it was stolen. Others whispered that the drum had walked away.
Only Sẹ́gun, a quiet young fisherman, noticed something strange. Each dawn, as he cast his net into the river, he heard a faint sound beneath the water—
du-dum… du-dum…
Soft. Patient. Speaking.
One morning, the sound formed words.
“Sẹ́gun… ọmọ ilẹ̀ yìí… child of this land…”
Terrified but curious, Sẹ́gun followed the voice upstream to a place the elders forbade—the Deep Bend, where the river darkened and the current slowed like breathing.
There, half-buried in water and reeds, lay the talking drum.
Its skin shimmered like wet bronze, and its cords moved as if alive. When Sẹ́gun touched it, the river stilled.
“I was hidden,” the drum spoke, “because the village forgot how to listen.”
The drum revealed the truth: the chiefs had begun using its voice to command fear instead of wisdom—calling false wars, silencing the weak, bending truth to power. The river, guardian of balance, took the drum and hid it beneath its waters until a true listener came.
“But why me?” Sẹ́gun asked.
“Because you listen more than you speak,” the drum replied.
The river rose gently and lifted the drum into Sẹ́gun’s arms. As he carried it back, fish leapt in celebration, and the wind hummed old melodies.
When Sẹ́gun returned to Ayanfẹ, he did not give the drum to the chiefs. Instead, he placed it in the village square and beat it once.
The drum spoke—not in commands, but in stories.
It told of forgotten promises, of unity, of the land’s pain and the people’s strength. The villagers wept, the chiefs bowed, and the rains finally came.
From that day on, the talking drum was never hidden again.
But it was said that if the people ever stopped listening—
the river would remember,
and the drum would return to the water,
where truth waits patiently beneath the flow.
And even today, when the night is quiet near a river, some say you can still hear it—
du-dum… du-dum…
Speaking to those who choose to listen
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