double-headed cylindrical drum

Drumming system employed by the Idoma people of Nigeria, described by Blench (1987). The instrument itself (ɔ̀kànga in Idoma) is a “a large cylindrical drum with two membranes, one of them snared” (46). The instrument is beaten on one face with a hooked stick, and pitch is regulated with palm pressure on one of the faces. Idoma is analyzed to have three tonal registers (L, M, and H) (Armstrong 1957), and the system (like other Idoma surrogate instruments) encodes tone with the contrastive pitches of the drum.According to Blench “in the context of royal music, it is used as a speech-surrogate... to echo in a reduced form the praise-names of the rulers” (46).

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