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\n\tA sacred \u201ctalking drum\u201d known as the Djidji Ay\u00f4kw\u00e9, looted from C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire by French colonial troops over a century ago, returned this month to the place where it was made. According to the Namibia Press Agency (NAMPA), the drum arrived on August 7 at its home village of Adjame, where the local community was able to see it for the first time.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe ten-foot-long, 940-pound drum has a single-piece cylindrical soundbox slit in half longitudinally. Extending out from the slit are two planks, one of which supports a carving of a jumping leopard. The box itself is decorated with carved and painted faces and geometric patterns.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe massive instrument was once used by C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s Atchan\/Ebri\u00e9 people to transmit messages between villages many miles apart, including warnings of impending French recruitment operations. It was seized by colonial authorities in 1916 as a way of suppressing local resistance.<\/p>\n
\n\tBetween 1916 and 1930, the Djidji Ay\u00f4kw\u00e9 was kept outside the French governor\u2019s Ivorian home. It was transferred to France in 1929 and housed most recently at Paris\u2019s Mus\u00e9e Quai Branly, where it recently underwent restoration.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe drum topped a list of 148 objects that C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire requested from France in 2019; the petition followed French President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s 2017 pledge to return works of art looted in Africa during the colonial era.<\/p>\n
\n\tFollowing a 2025 vote by the French parliament to authorize its repatriation, the Djidji Ay\u00f4kw\u00e9 was handed over to the Republic of C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire in a ceremony at the Mus\u00e9e Quai Branly in February. It arrived in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire in March but had not been taken out of its crate until now.<\/p>\n
\n\tEnsconced in a glass case mounted on a float, the drum was paraded through the Yopougon district of Abidjan, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s largest city, before continuing on to Adjame. There it was met by Ivorian minister of culture Francoise Remarck, along with local dignitaries and residents.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cA nation cannot develop if it doesn\u2019t preserve its memory and promote its heritage,\u201d Adjame mayor Farikou Soumahoro said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe want to see the drum with our own eyes so we can truly believe it belongs to us,\u201d said villager Jacqueline Akrebie.<\/p>\n
\n\tTraditional leader Cyriaque Ahoure said he had come to share a moment of \u201cgreat joy, when we remember our ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe drum will be exhibited at the Museum of Civilizations in Abidjan.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn recent years, institutions and collectors in the U.S. and Europe have faced increasing pressure to return cultural property to its original communities. In April, France passed a new law facilitating the restitution of items illegally acquired between 1815 and 1972.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2288641006.jpg?w=1024″] A sacred \u201ctalking drum\u201d known as the Djidji Ay\u00f4kw\u00e9, looted from C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire by French colonial troops over a century ago, returned this month to the place where it was made. According to the Namibia Press Agency (NAMPA), the drum arrived on August 7 at its home village of Adjame, where the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2088477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2088477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2088477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2088477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2088477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}