What is this?

[TONE74]

I read somewhere that this type of drum was modified in the Caribbean by east indian settlers in trinidad or guyana can't remember right now and used in chutney soca music. It was made bigger and the tuning rods were added, the shape is also a little different than the traditional one. So maybe it did have some sort of "influence"from the Cuban drums. So maybe dr Z is right in some way unless the article was not accurate which is also possible. It also looks like it, take the bottom head off and tunning lugs and boom you have a tumbadora se formo la rumba mi cobio.

[bongosnotbombs]

I'ts true these drums have been used in the Carribean, they are originally from Northern India.

..but until I read somewhere that the turnbuckle system of tuning has not always been original to the dholak, which it may have been, it is quite likely this drum either has always had metal tuning lugs or the dholak may have actually influenced the Cuban adoption of lugs, ect, instead of the other way around.

Everything I have heard about this drum implies that the metal turnbuckle has been availabe for this drum a long time, and rope and metal tightening systems are both available.

[TONE74]

Could also be that they both developed entirely independent from one another. I see that the dholak has a lot more tunning lugs than a tumbadora and different design. The more traditional the setting the higher the chance of them being roped and straight shaped (from what I see). If they influenced each other then they would be more similar.
The dholak is one of the few indian drums that have the tunning lugs (from what I've seen) most others are strung and it just happens that its the one used in Trinidad and Tobago in soca. It doesn't matter to me either way but it is interesting to know these facts. Cubans haven't invented many things but if you ever been there you would know that we are very crafty and would of not taken long to think of this in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Its not rocket science.
I've got to chill with this post I'm starting to sound like Dr. Z

[bongosnotbombs]

Well many drums at one time and currently are and were tightened or tuned with rope, even the snare drum was originally rope tuned....

What should be remembered about Cuban drums like congas and bongos is they started out as being tack heads, that is untuneable heads tacked onto the shells, using fire for tuning,
lugs being used on these kind of drums only happened during the last century.

[zaragenca]

As I said the body /design,the positions of the rugs tuning the hook configuration of the top part,(all of that have been taken from the several stages that the rug tuning system in Cuba would have at one point,(for the Timbales first since 1870's),and later in the 1950's was used for the Congas and Bongos...and i know the original design of the instrument...I've been around Indians percussionists here in Houston,(as I also said before).Dr. Zaragemca

[Isaac]

Just to take this discussion away from percussion inventions for a moment.
It could be that all of us are correct on this one.

(no, i'm not a professor of any kind, just a history buff)

If we look at the early history of photography, we find that the idea of fixing an image permanently
onto a surface was invented by a few inventors almost simultaneously in
different countries. ie. USA , Scotland, England, France, Brasil, and a few other places using different chemistry but getting similar results. These inventors had no contact with each other, but were
working urgently and competitively racing to create an improved way to save pictures on paper.
Others had done it earlier, but the picture would fade, so they'd do watercolor painting
over the pale image to add details. ( kind of like overdubbing a recording).

Maybe photography was an idea that was ready to be developed by mankind
at that certain stage in our development?..or simply that the market demanded it
and needed it.
The same can be said of any technology, including the tuning systems
on drums.
We all use photographs now daily...who remembers these early inventors & photographers
and their country? (Nicéphore Niépce, Henry Fox Talbot, George Eastman, Louis Daguerre,
Hercules Florence, John Herschel, Hippolyte Bayard, Lewis Carroll (guy who wrote Alice in Wonderand).
Who will remeber them in a few hundred or thousand years ?

Now back to the Indian drum...Ancient Hindu culture permeated & influenced
all of southern Asia, not just India - but well into Java, Borneo, present day
Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, the surrounding islands, and as far
as the Arabian Gulf. later, other cultures came on the scene and overshadowed
the older layers & beliefs - but they're still there in small pockets.
The two sided drums are still the older style of drum in most of these places that are no longer Hindu.

It's possible the new tuning systems developed in the Caribbean influenced the
traditional Dholaks, Pakawhaj and Mridangam, which now come in
both laced and tunable versions. Indian migration to the Caribbean
was pretty extensive. One can still hear traditional Javanese music
in Surinam for example. The practical need for tuning in a damper
climate may be the real mother of invention. It's not necessarily a better sound.

~ ISAAC

[korman]

I think you may be right with the photography example, Isaac! Once nuts and bolts are widely used in all sorts of machinery and fixtures, one does not have to be genius or cuban to realise that they can also be used to tighten a drumhead, so I think it is quite obvious that such a simple device can be independently created whenever there were drums that could benefit from it.
I wonder why it's so important to try and trace the first place where such improvement happened?

[ralph]

I wonder why it's so important to try and trace the first place where such improvement happened?

I think it has alot to do with historical accuracy and giving credit where credit is due. If we didn't record the who's and what's of a certain genre/culture/etc, future generations may never know about it, it would be lost. That said, I think Rene Lopez said it best, "its not so much who did it first? Its who did it so it can not go back to being the same again"