Bang! Bang! Whackawhacka boom!

[amethyst73]

On Saturday night, we went to hear a concert at the local university. The concert was part of an Asian music festival, in which the emphasis was on drums and drumming.

Drumming is probably one of the most primal musical arts, side by side with vocalizing. Surely early man must have discovered that one could bang rocks, sticks, or one's own hands together and make a sharp percussive noise. One could do this multiple times and create a rhythmic pattern. One could strike the instrument as slowly as an ox's heartbeat or as rapidly as a bird's wings in flight. Everything in nature held a beat, and one could answer that call.

One of the three pieces on the program used the large Japanese barrel drum, a standard instrument in taiko. This drum never fails to impress me. It's a visually striking instrument, to begin with. The biggest ones are probably about a yard across at their widest point in the middle, and you can see that width because it's usually sitting on its side on a tall stand so that the drum heads are at approximately shoulder height. The wall is a natural honey-brown wood, varnished and polished till it reflects the stage lights. The drum head surfaces are held in place by double rows of closely-set large nails, individually distinguishable from the back row of an auditorium.

And all of these elements can be used in the playing of the drum! The drumheads can be struck, obviously. But the wood rims of the drum are frequently struck as well. The sticks used in playing can be run along the rows of nails to make a scritching sound. If there are metal rings along the wall of the drum for carrying, as the one in Saturday's concert did, those too can be struck. Most surprisingly, the drum heads can be played in more ways than simple striking. The distance between the strike point and the center of the drumhead affects the tone and volume of the sound produced. The material used for striking changes those too. You can place one stick lightly on the drum head and move it closer to or farther from the edge as you strike with the other stick, changing the available vibrating surface area of the drum head and hence the tone sounded by the strike. And you can .. well, scribble is the best term I've come up with so far for it: you lay the stick against the drumhead, apply mild pressure to get some friction going, and then you move the stick around, keeping in contact with the drum head the whole time. Scribbling produces an eerie, resonant screeching set of tones.

But it's the sheer power of the instrument that really gets me. The drum can be positively whaled on, sometimes by two people at once (one on each end). and The resulting volume is just incredible. There is no need to amplify this instrument; played at its loudest, the drum in its turn plays the listener. The listener's body wall vibrates in response to the volume of the sound. The inside of your whole torso shakes and rumbles, and you are physically part of the playing.

The playing is primal. The physical response is primal. And the drums will speak for us all.

Comments

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

From your subject line, because I had not scrolled down yet, I was imagining you'd lost your grip on a wii controller and knocked things over.

But having read the post, now I'm imagining a wii taiko drumming game. And now I very much want one.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

Hee! Oh, that is a very cool idea. Quick - patent it and take it to Nintendo!

(With a subject line like that, if I'd knocked something over, I'd have had to knock over a great deal, I expect. So far, we've not even stepped on the kitties' tails while playing - may our luck continue!)

[haamel.livejournal.com]

There is a PS game called "Taiko no Tatsujin" that in its full version comes with a drum controller. I actually have this animal; never got around to cracking it open and playing it. I think I'm accepting offers for it ^_-

Anyways, the concert sounds awesome in the extreme.