Drum ||
The most sacred and important of all Native American drums is the Water Drum. It is the rarest and most protected of the tribal drums. There are two forms of water Drum. One is made with metal pots and usually called "kettle drums". The other and more sacred form of Water Drum is made with sacred wood and is used today only by a handful of tribal sacred rituals. The metal water drum, which can be purchased on the open market, is most often used by the Native American Church.
The North American Indian drum is not one drum, it is many drums.
Every kind of music (nearly) and every kind of society has drums. Any attempt to define drum is apparently subjective. One could describe tribal drum in volumes. My only intent is to seed some basic information which I have gathered from my own personal experiences with tribal drum over the last forty years. In my view, Native Americans are being harmed by the large volume of bad information which is presented over the internet and in published works. Bad information serves no good interests. The ideas expressed in this article come from years of personal experience. No one person can pretend to know everything about drum, or about anything. However, personal experiences of the author might be helpful to some people.
Photo || WaterDrum of the Native American Church.
Made from iron kettle. The drum beater in
the photo is for another drum. Photo by the author. ©2008.
People who buy drum in the modern world do not have this drum. The drum that you buy in a commercial transaction, even on tribal lands, is an "object".
Drum is not a table, chair or decorative lamp. In recent years drum has appeared in new distortions as an experiment in freedom of expression.
Tribal drum designs are the spiritual and ritual property of their tribes, clans and societies. Many commercial distributors have made available copies of those designs. Such objects have become very popular. I have seen commercial copies of tribal drum in every country I have visited. Copying and imitating tribal sacred objects is not morally correct. Tribal elders consider the copying of these objects and their ceremonies to be a violation of the original instructions. Self-deception is the only likely result from theft and imitation of the sacred of tribal people.
Left || 1x2. Tewa drum by famed maker Red Shirt of Taos Pueblo, made in 1980. Red Shirt was a Kiva elder and leader. He was also a master machinist who quit his high end work to come home and make drum late in his life. The bells on this drum were gifts to the World Journey by Dalai Lama in 1983. The Eagle Feather is the companion of the drum. Photo by the author. ©2008.
Tribal sacred drum comes with songs, is used with songs, and is kept alive, nourished by songs. Once sacred drum has been birthed it becomes an instrument of communication from the mystery life of the mother earth to the people. There are many different tribes and at least eight sacred instructions about drum. Drum of the Kiva tribes of the southwest has different original instructions than the eight-sided drum of the Woodland Tribes of Sacred Pipe. Some tribes have drums but no longer remember their original instructions. Many of these tribes have adopted with and without permission the tribal dance drums of the Plains Tribes. Most of the teachings of sacred rum are not available for public acquisition. You should assume that much of the information which is published regarding tribal drum are incomplete, at best.
Some forms of sacred drum are used and made within a group, kept and played by a group of people. Other drums are the property of societies or clans but are played and kept by one person.In this modern age a drum is easy to get. Some tribal drummers are happy and grateful to use marching band drums or professional musician drums. year by year the true sacred drums become more rare, more lonely, and harder to find.
Tribal sacred drum of North American Indians of every tribe is never "played" or struck with the hand. Drum is spoken to with a "striker". Many of these drum strikers have gone through sacred birthing are are themselves specific and separate tribal sacred objects that are part of a bundle. It is not polite to touch tribal drums if you see one. Learning to understand when you might be in the presence of a sacred spiritual object is something many American Indian learn growing up, at an early age.
Once drum has been made sacred and comes to live with its Keeper, that Keeper has the right and the responsibility to respect and use their own instructions and personal vision about how to proceed. While there are "traditions" within the world of drum, there is also this freedom of the people who are there at that time. This means that it is not possible to say everything about every drum. It is only possible to say something about some drums. If you listen to drum you will hear many things. Step by step each idea that you hear will build your understanding into something flexible and powerful. Knowledge is a process, not an event.
Left || Woodland Water Drum in ceremony at Pipestone Monument, 1981.
Photo by the author. ©2008.
The Life of Drums
The objects which belong to ceremonial people are private objects of power. They should never be touched without permission and it is never polite to ask for permission to touch mystery life objects.
The drum is another of those “Indian things” you can find in shops all over the country and the internet. Unless you really know your subject, it is almost impossible to tell who made these commercial drums. Many of the objects that are for sale as “Indian” are made nowhere near anything even resembling Native Americans.
The difference between commercially made drums and a ceremonial drum are the differences between synthetic life and real life. Real ceremonial drums go through a long birthing process and several important events before they are considered ready to work. There is also a mind set, an agreement to live a particular life, which is expected of those who keep and use before the people these sacred objects. Drums are only ever touched by people who have permission to touch them, for example. In modern society if you have a drum sitting out, people are always slapping it around. In American Indian culture this is very disrespectful. In general you should never touch a ceremonial object belonging to anyone other than you.
Proper tribal Drums are given ceremonial birthing. Some are buried in the earth for a while. Some indians give their sacred drums to little children to play with for a few months. This is a great little tradition and they feel the whole experience is very good for the drum. There are numerous ways in which a ceremonial drum is properly birthed. Most of these procedures are private matters inside the tribal communities. They also vary from tribe to tribe so there is no one way to describe how and what this process is.
Like the Eagle Feather, a drum has status as a person. It is not considered an object. This is the important difference. Objects made for sale are not the same as those objects made for ceremony inside the tribes.
I have met many drum makers in my travels. Only a handful of American Indian drum makers exist in these days. Many of these drum artists take their drums around, so it is possible through fair trade to acquire a really great American Indian Drum. As in all things, doing some research and finding good information is a healthy part of the process of seeking out any sacred object. However, it is very rare to find a drum that has been birthed coming up for sale. It is however possible to search for and find a drum that could be passed through the sacred blessing way cycle. With the exception of a small class of drums from the Alaskan Natives, only drums with two sides can be blessed and considered sacred.
Different tribes have widely varying habits and traditions for drums. In the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest, for example, each drum has one person that plays it only. In the northern tribes most drums have at least four people who are responsible for and play one drum. The life path and the energy of these two drums is very different. Many tribal drummers, most probably, receive their life into the drum from direct teachings in an oral tradition. Such teachings and multi-generational drums have their own private teachings, methods and procedures. Each group or person who is in possession of sacred objects that are used in a sacred way for the people receives teachings and obligations from those who went before. Each new generation of drummers brings new experiences to the life of drums.
Tribal drums are always played with a beater or striker. They are never played with the bare hand. It is disrespectful to touch a drum with your bare hand in most situations. The striker is something that many people make and have as part of their household. A really good striker has its own ceremonies, history and respectful way of being obtained or made. A person may have a drum striker in their bundle, on their altar, even without having a drum in the house. I have traveled the world with my housed and bundled sacred objects of the Four Directions Unity Bundle. One of those objects is an old hand-made drum striker donated by an old friend.
Pow-Wow Drums |
The pow-wow is a common American Indian event. they take place all over North America and other parts of the world as well. They are a social event which started in the northern plains region just after WW 2. The pow-wow is a sub-culture within a sub-culture. Pow-wows are not part of the tradition sacred rites and teachings of any tribe. having said that, any significant gathering of American Indian people always brings up and somehow or another becomes an expression of the sacred and original cultures of American Indian people. It is conundrum inside an enigma. It is a vulgar form of social behavior and exhibitionism married to prize money and vision quests and even rebellion. A pow-wow is many things all at once. In some places at some times, the pow-wow is a profound and certifiable mystery life experience. At another pow-wow at another place it is a shallow exercise in imitation in expectation of money. Sometimes it is both of these things at the same place.
Pow-wow drums have their own culture and teachings, and behaviors. I have no great experience with the sub-culture of American Indian pow-wows. There are a lot of drums at pow-wows. Each drum is most often situated within a group. The behavior and rules and style of those groups is similar to each other, in that there is a culture now of pow-wow drumming.
This article cannot adequately express any preferential views on the subject of American Indian pow-wow drumming.
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