Dhanki

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Dhanki , ḍhankī , is a small, rare kettle drum that is mostly played in pairs in Indian folk music in southern India .

Design and style of play

The dhanki has a bowl-shaped, wooden body . The membrane, which consists of an animal skin, is pulled over the edge and attached to holes that run around the edge using strips of skin. With a V-shaped lacing, the membrane is tightened on a ring placed around the base.

The use of the dhanki is mentioned by the British infantryman Charles Russel Day (1860–1900), who gathered a wealth of material on Indian music and musical instruments during his five years of military service in India in the 1880s. He also describes the religious music played on festive occasions in front of the temple with wind instruments, drums and idiophones . The typical professional ensemble that performed at temple ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, public celebrations and dance performances (generally referred to as tamashas ) in South India usually consisted of one or two nadaswaram - cone oboes, one for the melody and the other for a drone tone ( curuti , Sanskrit sruti ), a barrel drum dhol (today the South Indian double-cone drum mridangam ) and a pair of hand cymbals ( jhanj ). Such an ensemble ( mela , Sanskrit “gathering”, “meeting”) consisted in some cases of a mukhavina (“mouth / face vina ”) - a smaller version of the nadaswaram , which is now only occasionally played in South Indian folk music, a bamboo flute ( venu ), a flageolet , a drone instrument and a dhanki (misleadingly referred to as side drum , " small drum "). Apart from the fact that the occasional “jarring noises” of these ensembles with between three and 30 musicians are most pleasant to hear from a distance, Day does not comment on the type of music.

In a folk music ensemble in Tamil Nadu today , the melody-leading mukhavina can be accompanied by a dhanki or a double-headed drum ( mridangam ) and a sruti upanga . The latter is a simple bagpipe that occurs in Tamil Nadu and only serves as a drone instrument. Musical groups with mukhavina and drums are common in ceremonial and rural light music at festivals throughout South India. In the 19th century, small mukhavina ensembles ( cinna melam , Tamil "small ensemble") were also part of the music accompanying the Bharatanatyam dances, until the small, shrill-sounding double reed instrument was replaced by a western clarinet at the beginning of the 20th century .

Origin and Distribution

Day mentions another small kettle drum called dinni , which members of the Dasari caste played at Vishnuit temple ceremonies in South India, and notes a similarity with the metal kettle drum tabl shami , which is used in the Arab world and is struck with two sticks. Kettle drums have a tradition in India that goes back to the time of Rigveda (2nd millennium BC) when they were known under the name of dundubhi . In many cases in the Vedic writings and in the great epics that followed, dundubhi probably meant a wooden kettle drum used as a war drum. The largest Indian kettle drum is the dhamsa , which is widespread in eastern northern India . The simplest form of a kettle drum is a clay pot covered with a membrane at its opening. Some types are still used today in regional musical styles, such as the ghumat in Goa or the specially shaped mizhavu in Kerala .

A later tradition, which Day suggests, is associated with the name nagara for a type of kettle drum from the oriental-Islamic cultural area that is played in pairs. The nagara was one of the insignia of power among the Mughal rulers from the beginning of the 16th century and is depicted accordingly on Indian illuminations . Like dhanki, which is also played in pairs, it only occurs in folk music. The dhanki is not identical to the larger south Indian kettle drum dhanka , which functionally corresponds to the nagara and is transported on horseback during temple processions . The most famous Indian drum pair is the tabla .

literature

  • Ḍhankī. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 36

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Charles Russel Day: The music and musical instruments of southern India and the Deccan . Novello, Ewer & Co., London / New York 1891, p. 95 ( at Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Clarinet an Accompaniment for the Chinna Melam? Bharatanatyam and the Worldwide Web
  3. ^ David B. Reck: Musical Instruments. Southern Area. In: Alison Arnold (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 5: South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent. Routledge, London 1999, p. 366
  4. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments . National Book Trust, New Delhi 1977, p. 45
  5. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. Werner Bachmann. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, p. 32
  6. ↑ P. Sambamurthy: A Dictionary of South Indian Music and Musicians. Vol. 1 (A – F), The Indian Music Publishing House, Madras 1984, p. 111. In central India, dhanka refers to a small hourglass drum related to the dhadd .