Sekere

A sekere is made from a dried gourd covered in a loose, hand strung net of beads or cowrie shells, played by shaking, striking against the hand, or twisting so the beads slap rhythmically against the gourd's outer surface, producing a bright, textured percussive sound distinct from an enclosed rattle. Within Yoruba religious practice, the sekere is used in the worship of specific orishas, and particular rhythms played on it, together with accompanying songs, are understood to call and honour individual orishas by name, a function documented in Bascom's and Idowu's scholarship on Yoruba religion and divination, which situates percussion and specific rhythmic patterns as integral, non optional elements of correctly addressing a given orisha rather than as generic musical accompaniment layered onto worship from outside it.

The instrument's construction itself, requiring skilled netting of beads at a specific density to produce the right sound, is a recognised craft within Yoruba ritual material culture in its own right. Skilled sekere players are recognised within their communities much as skilled drummers are in other West African percussion traditions, since correctly summoning a given orisha depends on getting the associated rhythm exactly right rather than approximating it.

Sources Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West AfricaWilliam Bascom with Olodumare: God in Yoruba BeliefE. Bolaji Idowu

The sekere travelled with enslaved Yoruba people across the Atlantic and remains an active ritual instrument today within the African diaspora traditions that carried Yoruba orisha worship forward under new names and new local forms, including Santeria in Cuba and the wider Caribbean and Candomble in Brazil, where orishas continue to be honoured with specific music, including sekere rhythms, closely related to their West African originals despite centuries of separate development on different continents.

Idowu's and Peel's scholarship on Yoruba religious life documents how thoroughly music and specific instrumentation are treated as inseparable from correct ritual practice across this whole diasporic religious family, so an instrument like the sekere is never merely decorative accompaniment but functions as part of the technical apparatus of worship itself, comparable in that sense to how a bell or gong operates in liturgical traditions on other continents. Its continued use across West Africa and the diaspora alike makes it one of the more geographically widespread sacred percussion instruments still in active religious use anywhere in the world. Contemporary practitioners in Cuba and Brazil continue to train new sekere players within their respective houses of worship, maintaining a continuous chain of oral transmission that in some documented lineages can be traced back many generations.