“When the Drum Speaks — Oromo Music and Art” Music among the Oromo is not only sound— it is inheritance breathing, a memory carved in rhythm, a covenant between the living and those gone before. When the drum is struck, it is not wood— it is the heartbeat of a nation that refused silence. When the flute is lifted, air becomes wisdom, and melodies travel like migrating cranes carrying ancestral stories— soft, dignified, unbroken. Art, among the Oromo, is not decoration— it is identity shaped with