slit-log drum pair, manguaré

Drumming system of the Ocaina people of the North-West Amazon region in Brazil, described in Whiffen (1915). The instrument itself is a drum pair (manguaré in Br. Portuguese) comprised of two slit-log drums hollowed at varying thicknesses, each suspended at an oblique angle (1358). Each is around 6 feet long and 2 feet in diameter, but the smaller of the two is considered the ‘male’ and the larger the ‘female’ drum (1358). Struck with two wooden rubber-headed mallets, four distinct pitches are possible: “two low ones on the female manguare, and two high ones on the male” (1359). Ocaina is a tonal language with H and L tone (Achmann 1993). Whiffen does not describe the encoding system, but it may be comparable to the nearby Bora manguaré, a tone-based abridging system. Content includes long-distance communication.

Whiffen, T. (1915). 65. THE NORTH-WEST AMAZONS. In J. Umiker-Sebeok & T. A. Sebeok, Speech Surrogates: Drum and Whistle Systems (1976) (pp. 1362–1364). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110804423-036