Août 2026

One day, in Pastor Abou Assifa’s church, they were playing the tam-tam. The drums carried, the way they do, past the walls and out into the neighborhood.

A man came out of his house. He was not a Christian, and he had not come for the service. He had come for the sound. And he danced — Assifa recounts it as a string of the same word, danced, danced, danced — for as long as the drumming lasted. When they stopped, he was unhappy that it was over. What he said on his way off has stayed with the pastor since: in any case, it was the rhythm that was going to bring him to church.

For Assifa, the moment sits underneath a larger conviction about what happens when worship finally arrives in a community’s own music — when the songs run on the rhythms people already move to, the djikpo, the guélédé, rather than borrowed tunes in a borrowed language. Something in a person recognizes it before they’ve decided anything.

A man stepped out of his house for the drums. That was the part that reached him first.