Cylindrical Drum

Drumming system employed by the Idoma people of Nigeria, described by Armstrong (1953). The instrument itself is an “open-ended drum, about a foot in diameter and two feet long”, played with the bare hands (870). Idoma is analyzed to have three tonal registers (L, M, and H), and the system (like other Idoma surrogate instruments) likely encodes tone with the contrastive pitches of the drum. On the drum, multiple pitches are possible, via tensioning the drumhead with the heel of one hand and by striking different parts of the drumhead (870). The system is used in a musical context by the “chief drummer at a large dance”; content includes instructions for musicians and dancers and names (872).

Armstrong, R. G. (1976). 46. TALKING INSTRUMENTS IN WEST AFRICA. In T. A. Sebeok & J. Umiker-Sebeok (Eds.), Speech Surrogates: Drum and Whistle Systems. 1976. (pp. 865–878). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110804423-017 Blench, R. (1987). Idoma musical instruments. African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 6(4), 42–52. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v6i4.1260