Kete

Kete is the royal court drum music of the Asante (Ashanti) people of Ghana, performed by a percussion orchestra of hand and stick drums, bells and rattles whose interlocking patterns accompany ceremonial dancing. Traditionally played at the courts of high-ranking chiefs, in war and at funerals and rites of ancestor reverence, its named pieces are led by the kwadum master drum, whose phrases cue changes in the music and in the dancers' symbolic gestures. The group, whose drums were historically covered in red and black felt signifying blood and death, was adopted from the Jaman people during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and remains the ceremonial sound of Asante kingship.