Looted Ivorian “Talking Drum” Arrives at Its Home Village After More Than a Century
A sacred Ivorian “talking drum” known as the Djidji Ayôkwé, looted by French colonial troops in 1916, arrived on August 7 in its home village of Adjame in Côte d’Ivoire, where residents saw it for the first time, according to the Namibia Press Agency (NAMPA). The drum is about ten feet long and weighs 940 pounds, and was used by the Atchan/Ebrié people to transmit messages between villages, including warnings about French recruitment operations; it was seized to suppress resistance. After being kept in Côte d’Ivoire and transferred to France in 1929, it was most recently held and restored at Paris’s Musée Quai Branly, and topped a 2019 list of 148 objects Côte d’Ivoire requested from France following President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 pledge on restitution. After a 2025 French parliamentary vote authorizing repatriation, it was handed over in February at the Musée Quai Branly, arrived in Côte d’Ivoire in March, and was paraded through Abidjan’s Yopougon district before reaching Adjame, where Culture Minister Françoise Remarck attended; it will be exhibited at the Museum of Civilizations in Abidjan.
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This story was covered in Museums Under Pressure, Banksy’s Price Tag