The Beat of Tradition

As Indigenous people, we are living in an exciting phase in our history. We are expressing ourselves through art, music and literature in ways never been seen before.

With this in mind, I recently decided to build my first hand drum. It began as a wooden hoop, some soaked hide and the will to make something special. The soaking process is the second most time-consuming aspect of drum making and takes more than a day.

To find the right hide is important. There are a couple ways to go about this. Some buy off traders and hunters who prepare hide for a living. Others choose a more ethical approach and use the salvageable remains of roadkill. We want to approach the hide with gentle respect knowing that the sound our drum will make is a conduit for the voices of our past to echo in the present.

To prepare the hide you must cut a circle about two inches wider in surface area than your wooden hoop. If your hide is soaked properly you could achieve this with scissors or a blade using a log surface or any flat circular surface as reference. Then cut 12 pairs of small holes in an even distribution around the circumference of your hide.

Next, cut the hide into one long, thin strip, four times the size of your extended arms, fingertip to fingertip. It’s important to stretch out the strip and test the toughness of the hide. Any snaps will give you trouble in the future; if your drum dries with a weak strip it will affect the sound quality.

Then we place the wooden hoop on top of the soaked hide circle and begin the looping process. This is the third most time-consuming aspect of drum making. Begin by finding a pair of holes and feed one end of your strip through the left hole from underneath the hide. Leave about nine inches of hide strip. This will become important later on.

Then we must loop the remaining entirety of the hide strip through the right hole of the pair, again beginning from underneath the hide and upwards. Once this is done, find the pair of holes directly across from the pair you just looped and do the same. Upon completion, continue the process with the pair of holes to the right of the pair you looped first. Continue on this way until all the pairs of holes are looped.

As you loop, make sure the strips are as tight as they can be. A tighter drum means a better sound and it will also give you more strip to work with. At one point your strip may snap but do not fret for we purposely cut ourselves an excess amount to make up for this problem! If you must, you can always tie two broken strips together and continue looping.

 

Once all holes are looped, you must tie your drum strings together using both ends of the remaining hide strip. Here’s where some creativity will come into play. Just as each drum face is different so will each drum tie be different. The only goal is to make it as tight and as balanced as possible. Your hand will find a comfortable way to hold it.

Once you finish tying your drum then comes the most time-consuming process – leaving it to dry. You should ideally leave your drum leaning against an open window where it can be exposed to sunlight. This will take two or three days, which gives you time to search for a drumstick, perhaps making one out of a carved branch. Lastly, when storing your drum remember to never leave it lying face down – it’s disrespectful to the drum and to all the hard work you put into creating it!

When one feels called to make a hand drum it is a special moment. There is quite literally a rhythm that you hear deep inside you. It’s the heartbeat of our people, gently guiding us and keeping our feet walking at a steady pace. It was first gifted to us by our women. In their infinite wisdom, they created something out of nothing so that we may meet with other tribes in peace. When each tribe brought their drums it meant that all were drumming in unison and when we sing and play in unison, fights and disagreements were less likely to arise.

That’s a beautiful sentiment but what does it mean in 2016 when Native singers appear more like folk heroes than musicians? They carry the torch for all of us but drums are not meant for traditionalists only. They are here for all to discover. A hand drum is meant to be personal to those who carry them. Any song is the right song to sing.