Archive for category Drum Articles
Shopping For Your First Drum Set
Your first drum set purchase is very exciting! You have probably waited a long time to buy your first drumset and have thought a lot about it. Even though it is exciting, it is important to be patient and do your research before you buy a drum set.
Where Do I Begin?
Use Native American Painted Drums For Drumming Or Southwestern Decor
Native American drums are so much more than just instruments. They make a statement that carries the weight of an entire culture in their meaning. Owning a hand painted drum is a very personal opportunity. It gives you the chance to connect with another person in a different place or time.
It is thrilling to hold one of the older drums from years ago and to imagine what it must have been like for the artist. How did they live? What were their dreams and desires or maybe their difficulties and challenges in life? Many people love to use real natural hide hand drums for drumming circles and powwows as well as decorating for just these kinds of reasons.
Making Djembe Drums From a British Columbia Rainforest
For the last 35 years, my partner & I have played world hand drums, djembes, congas, bongos, ashikos, tabla & temple blocks. Mostly, we have played for the fun of it and the mystery of how the powerful sound affects us the drummers, as well as those who hear it. We played in an all hand percussion band for a few years and found it wonderfully challenging and very very satisfying.
In all those years, the thought of actually making our own djembe drums never even once occurred to us, even though it was a struggle back then to buy a decent hand carved djembe anywhere but Africa. We even traveled to Sierra Leone, West Africa in our quest and spent a couple of years teaching high school there. At that time, 1980, it was frowned upon for white people to play or touch the drums and it was riot provoking for a woman of any colour to do so. We managed to come back to Canada with two drums; one, a 14 inch sengui, from the Sierra Leone National Dance Troupe, the other a small tourist grade djembe. We never did get that one to sound like a drum at all, but the one from the dance troupe is still in our collection and is a great little drum. Our next drum purchases came from a music store in Mexico, a pair of gorgeous congas.