Posted on April 7, 2021May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Skin Heading Ethnic Drums, Etc. Skin Heading Ethnic Drums, Etc. by Topher Gayle Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 Derbeckis (A.K.A. dumbegs or Arabic tabla) are medium-sized (10" to 18") hand drums used most frequently in Middle-Eastern folk and Belly-Dance music, and also heard in jazz idioms. Two main types of the drum exist: metal bodied drums, usually Turkish, utilizing a mechanical drumhead tensioner much like that on bongos or conga (which drummers frequently want to have replaced by banjo tensioners); and the clay-bodied drums which come in a large variety of sizes and shapes. Wood-bodied drums also exist and may usually be treated as clay (for the most part). Tim Olsen asked if various skin-headed stringed instruments might be treated by this device. I have not done so myself, but I don’t see any serious complications. A radiator hose clamp chain can be used to fix the skin to the side of the body if the body side joins the top at a right angle. I used this technique on a small wooden drum with good results. Blocks were required to raise the body up to the top frame hex, since the drum was so short. The skin was brought up to tension as described below, and then the radiator clamps attached. The assembly was let dry just as is usually done. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on December 28, 2020May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Quick Cuts: The Boujmaa Brothers’ Moroccan Lutherie Shop Quick Cuts The Boujmaa Brothers’ Moroccan Lutherie Shop by Bruce Calder Originally published in American Lutherie #82, 2005 While in Marrakech recently, my wife and I discovered the “Ensemble Artisanal,” a government-sponsored complex of shops located outside the medina in the Ville Nouvelle. Here you can watch artisans at work as well as buy their products. These range from carpet makers to makers of babouche (the typical Moroccan leather slippers) to jewelry makers to woodworkers of several types. It’s a great alternative to the heavy sales pressure to be found in the souks, and if you’re not the haggling type (an art form taken to its highest expression here in Morocco), so much the better — prices are fixed, and the things you buy are always of the best quality. Even better, the money goes directly to the artisans. It was a most pleasant surprise while in the Ensemble Artisanal to discover brothers Benaddi and Blad Boujmaa’s lutherie shop. Makers of both traditional Berber and Arabic instruments (“We make both, since we are half Berber and half Arabic, just like most Moroccans,” Blad told me), their atelier has been in its present location for about ten years. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on May 21, 2020May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips Tamburitzas Tamburitzas by Nick Hayden Originally published as Guild of American Luthiers Data Sheet #18, 1975 This is a run down on the Tamburitza family. This instrument came first from Yugoslavia, mostly from Croatia. In the past 25 years there has been hundreds of children’s junior groups formed in the U.S., from New York to California. Most of the Tamburitzas are made in this country by men like me. Some people order from Europe, but those are factory made. There is a university here in Pittsburg which has had a Tamburitza group for over 30 years. They travel all over the world. I know they travel out your way to perform, so watch the paper, and you can see them. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on May 21, 2020May 16, 2025 by Dale Phillips The Portuguese Guitarra: A Modern Cittern The Portuguese Guitarra: A Modern Cittern by Ronald Louis Fernández Originally published in American Lutherie #27, 1991 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 In Portugal, the word guitarra refers to a present-day cittern similar in appearance to and directly derived from the 18th-century English guitar. This instrument, typically accompanied by a Spanish-type guitar called viola or violão in Portuguese, is used in performing musical variations and in accompanying the fado, an urban Portuguese song form. Consequently, it is also known in Portuguese as the guitarra de fado. While these instruments are not abundant in North America, luthiers do encounter them here, especially where Portuguese fishermen have come ashore or emigrants have settled — New Bedford and Fall River, Massachusetts; the Hawaiian Islands; Providence, Rhode Island; San Diego, San Jose, Tulare, Visalia, Artesia, and Chino, California; Newark, New Jersey; Seattle, Washington; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 12, 2020May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips It’s a Kabosy It’s a Kabosy by Paul Hostetter Originally published in American Lutherie #35, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 Madagascar is a huge island about the size of Washington, Oregon, and California combined. Situated 180° around the earth in any direction from these three states, this single-language country lies in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. I shall probably recount more about music from Madagascar than about construction details of this delightful little instrument for this simple reason: the kabosy’s musical raison d’être exceeds in interest the technical complexity of the instrument itself. Nonetheless, it’s worth a long look because, like most things Malagasy, there’s nothing quite like it anywhere else. Despite obvious superficial appearances, Malagasy culture is not particularly African at all, but is an extraordinary mélange of Polynesian, Southeast Asian, Arabic, African, and, more recently, European influences. (Madagascar was a French colony until 1972.) Like the legendary flora and fauna of that far-away island, Malagasy culture and music bear but a passing resemblance to culture elsewhere on the planet. Fortunately there are numerous recordings now available of just about every stripe of this remarkable musical culture. A discography follows. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
