Hopefully, this conversation is far from over, though admittedly-at least for a time-it has branched off from a strict discussion of the thread's title.

For instance, I've been thinking of blind will's statement that "the fact that most of the black slaves that came to the United states came from the northern savanna's, and in this area of Africa drums were not as common"

Here's one of the online references that I found to the Cental African Savanna

-snip-

I'm not sure that I would agree that the majority of enslaved Africans came from Central Africa. The sense I got from my reading was that different ethnic groups were more heavily populated at different times. But generally, I've read that the majority of Africans who were enslaved came from West Africa {by 'came from' I mean were indigenous to-not got there by forced travel from Central Africa].

If you are saying that drums aren't a part of the music tradition of some Central African ethnic groups, that may indeed be true. I don't know enough about it to say yeah or nay. But what about the Conga drum that is so heavily used in Afro-Caribbean music? That drum gets its name from the Congo {Central Africa}.

And I found this quote about musical instruments and African cultures:

"Similar musical instruments are found throughout most of black Africa. However, the flora and culture found in any particular region influences the dominance of certain categories of instruments. Drums are for instance more popular in the forest regions of West Africa than in the tree-less savanna areas of southern Africa. Musical instruments often show a close link between sculpture and music."

A History of African Music

-snip-

But that quote refers to 'the tree-less savanna areas of southern Africa".

Also here's an excerpt from a Wikipedia article:

"The wide array of drums used in African traditional music include tama talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West Africa, bendir in North Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and different types of drums often called engoma or ngoma in Central and Southern Africa."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Africa

And for what's its worth, since the late 1980s, West African djembe drums appears to have become The Drum of choice by Afrocentric African Americans. Prior that time {at least in the Eastern part of the USA}, African American people [almost always men] who played drums at African festivals and other ethnic cultural or spiritual events were playing Conga drums and bongo drums. I'm not sure where 'bongo' drums came from-but I think they're of Central African origin.