The Drum and the Huluppu Tree: an ancient story retold and adapted for drumming groups by Leo Hartshorn

This drum story is from the ancient Sumerians, a culture where we find the first drummer named recorded history, Lipushiau, a priestess from the city of Ur. This story from the second millennium B.C.E concerns the goddess Innana and the warrior-king Gilgamesh.*

Teach three rhythms and signal words. Drummers are to play the appropriate sounds when they hear the signal words in the reading of the story: 1) “a peaceful garden”- soft, playful sounds; 2) “wild things”- loud, raucous sounds; 3) “war”- marching rhythm


Story of Innana


Innana was walking by the great river Euphrates one day and came across the Tree of Creation, a huluppu tree. It had been uprooted and carried away by the swift flowing river. She took the tree and planted it in her sacred garden in the holy city of Uruk. She hoped to carve from the tree a bed to sleep in and a throne to sit on in her peaceful garden.

Little did Innana know that hidden in the branches of the huluppu tree were all sorts of untamed animals. A snake had built a nest in the roots of the tree. The wild woman Lilith had made a home in the lower branches. The ferocious Tmdugud bird was raising her chicks in the upper branches. Without knowing it Innana had brought into her calm and peaceful garden of her holy city all these wild things.

What was she to do with all these wild things. She called on Gilgamesh, the warrior-king to help her. With his clankety armor on Gilgamesh kills the scary snake. Lilith and the Imdugud bird flee in terror. After all the wild things were gone, Gilgamesh carves from the huluppu tree a bed and a throne for Innana. In appreciation for getting rid of the wild things, Innana makes a drum and a drumstick for Gilgamesh from the Tree of Creation in the peaceful garden.

You might think that because the wild things had left Innana’s peaceful garden, that she could sleep in her bed and sit on her, throne in peace. But, that was not to be. Instead of using Innana’s gift of the drum for making peace, Gilgamesh used the drum to call the young men to go to war. With the beating of the drum of war came much war, death and destruction. And the cries of the mothers and wives of the young men were great. It caused the drum of Gilgamesh to fall into the dark places of the earth where death and destruction were born. Enkidu, a friend of Gilgamesh, tried to go to the underworld and get the drum back, but died trying to retrieve it.

This story reminds us that the peaceful garden of our world has been invaded by wild things, evil forces of war, death and destruction. And the good gifts of creation, like the drum, have been used for purposes of war. Throughout humans history the drum has been used to summon young men to war. But, there have always been those like Enkidu, who have tried to retrieve from the dark forces the good gifts of creation and are trying to take back the drum from its use in making war and to use the drum to restore small peaceful gardens in this world.

* Story found in Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 142-144.