Hand Drums

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About Hand Drums:

The hand drum category is home to one of the most diverse product assortments in all of music. While the basic idea of a skin stretched over a hollow shell is quite simple and ingenious, ancient cultures around the world found several variations, each with their own style of play and unique sound characteristics.

From Africa, the two instruments most often found in modern music are the cajon and djembe. The cajon is essentially a box with a resonant front plate and a port, or partially open, soundboard at the rear. Because the player also uses the instrument as a seat, this allows the percussionist to operate the cajon and other hand instruments interchangeably. The popularity of remote kick pedals has risen is in recent years, partially due to the incorporation of cajon with more traditional drum kits. The djembe features a goblet-shaped shell, with a cylindrical sound chamber at the base of a bowl. It’s often constructed with a wooden, synthetic or composite shell.

A similarly shaped instrument is the smaller chalice-shaped doumbek of the Middle East region, which is also credited with developing the tambourine. The doumbek typically features a ceramic, plastic or metal body, giving it a noticeably more defined sound than the djembe. Latin percussion may contribute the most to modern day popular music, with congas, bongos, maracas, timbales, the guiro, shakers and more all having achieved great notoriety.