In the “western” world most drums are made from metal, wood and “skin” (although that “skin” is now usually synthetic) and they are usually played with sticks, mallets, or brushes.
In Asia and Africa, however, many drummers hold no stick or mallet, and their instrument is a clay pot or a vegetable gourd.
Doubtless, some “westerners” imagine that music played by a hand drummer on a clay pot is necessarily simple, crude, “unrefined”.
That assumption is dead wrong…as is strikingly illustrated by this post’s “musical bonus”.
It was “tourism” that provided gainful employment to the pictured individual
Before the restoration of the Shari Hammam, and the “redevelopment” of its surrounds – most particularly the provision, adjacent, of a pleasant courtyard + cafe – it simply would not have been worth his while to “busk” there.
Prior to the restoration effort, this was a dirty, dilapidated, uninviting location – one through which people scurried, on their way to somewhere else.
Doubtless, there are some who decry the pictured musician’s very presence as “Disney-ish”.
i don’t.
My beloved and I watched him closely – both when he was “performing”, and when was relaxing, just quietly “being himself”.
In both “performative” and “offstage” mode, this gentleman gave every indication that he was a contented person, not overworked, enjoying friendly, unforced interaction with the (mostly, local) “tourists”, and earning a decent living via a skill he possessed and which he relished.
Nothing “Mickey Mouse” or “ersatz” was going on.
Yes, our hero would not have been there, but for “tourism”; however, to decry that is akin to deploring the performance of opera in an especially constructed opera house, or of drama in a theatre, as intrinsically “fake” or “elitist”.
Some “touristic” things are horribly phoney.
Some tourism has profoundly toxic results.
That does not mean that all tourism is terrible, nor that everything “touristic” is deplorable.
In both “erudite”/“classical” and “demotic”/“folk” musics, clay pot hand drums – variously, extremely “rustic” in appearance or highly decorated – have long been present in most of the Subcontinent.
They are known by various names, but most commonly as “ghatam”.
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Musical bonus
This post’s hero was a capable musician, but not a “god of the ghatam”.
The ghatam’s pre-eminent master was born in Chennai (then “Madras”), very nearly 83 years ago.
T.H. Vinayakram – aka “Vikku” Vinayakram, or simply as “Vikku” – has often been referred/deferred to as “the god of ghatam”.
I last saw him in concert, only a few years ago; his musicianship was still almost beyond belief.
He gained worldwide acclaim as a member of Shakti; to my knowledge, Vikku is the only Grammy-winning ghatam player!
This performance was given in 1976; all hands are amazing, but most especially Vikku’s and Zakir Hussain’s.
Even more so is Zakir & Vikku’s “telepathic” musical connection.
Click here for a 2017 interview with Vikku.