From Sea Islands Drum to Hammond B-3

The Smithsonian’s African American music holdings include a Sea Islands wooden drum and a Hammond B-3 owned by James Brown. The objects should not be forced into a simple evolutionary line: one is not a primitive ancestor of the other. Each belongs to makers, players, rooms, and distinct histories.

Placed in conversation, they reveal continuity at the level of practice—timing, touch, repetition, response, and the ability to move a gathering. Technology changes the available controls. Black musicians repeatedly make those controls answer social and musical needs their designers did not fully anticipate.