by Isaac » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:57 pm
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