I was digging through the percussion of a local music store a long time ago when I spotted this drum. Pretty much everything was made by the companies you'd expect - Remo, LP - except this. The terra cotta body really gets a ringing sound. The metal darbukas didn't have nearly the ring of this little puppy. I'm not sure what animal the skin is made from but given the fact that it looks like it's held on with a tough but ordinary string, I always liked to assume it comes from some little village. There's not trademark or anything. It was just a nameless drum sitting in a jumble of notable companies. I tend to refer to it as the Djembe With No Name whenever possible just to give it a real spaghetti western vibe. I know, it doesn't really seem like an appropriate vibe for the type of music this drum was born to play but let's face it, until Ennio Morricone came along westerns were pretty much about orchestras, gentle acoustic guitars and harmonica.
But I digress.
I assume that this is technically considered a djembe because it's rope, or string reinforced with some thread in this case, holding on the the skin of the head. Personally, I tend to think of it more as a darbuka because the bright ringing of the body is so different from the warm, woody sound I'm used to hearing from a djembe. How much of the classification is based on construction versus how much is about the sound of an instrument? If anybody out there can clear that up for certain, please feel free to comment.
Either way, the brightness playing around the edges really cuts through a mix. It's amazing how much space you can fill in a song with just a hand drum without stepping burying the other instruments too much.
