User talk:STUDIO O

Making of the Tassa Drum Traditionally in the early ages, the tassa drum is made from a clay shell (bowl shaped) structure and is covered with goat skin. In order to get the best sound out of this drum you have to heat up the goat skin, by doing this you are tuning the drum to resonate a higher pitch/tone. While the skin is hot you can play this drum and will stay tuned for about 15-30 minutes. In the 21st century making these drums has changed and evolved, now we use metal tanks and cut them to a certain height, and use hooks or a welded ring to pull down a synthetic skin. The good thing about synthetic drum skins you do not have to make a fire and heat them up, you can tighten up your bolts and you can tune your drum just like how a trap set is tuned. Most people use the synthetic drums heads, but there are those who still keep it old school and use the clay shell goatskin drums to play up till this day. However the Bass drums are made up of a specific type of tree trunk, usually mango or cedar wood, but they do carry some heavy weight. Then you take the wood and carve the inside to make it hollow, the shell can be carved up to 1 inch thick. Original Tassa Expo now uses plywood to shape a shell which is about ¾ inch thick and is light weight so you can play for long periods of time. Next the bass shell is covered with goat skin or deer skin and is tightened by rope, pulling both ends together. To get sound out of the bass drum, now you have to add what we call “Masala” to the middle of the skin (inside of drum) to give it a bass tone when being played. There are 2 different tones on the each skin, one that is lower (bass) that is played with a cushioned stick and the other is higher (treble) which is played with your hand. When the bass drum is made correctly this sound can travel for far distances. The “Jhaal” (cymbals) are normally made up of round shaped brass or stainless steel, which has a cup like shape in the middle to resonate a sound. With our tassa drums we do include tassa sticks (chob) originally made with wild cane, these are used to play the drum. Now we use fiberglass that are shaped to be flexible and the tip of the fiberglass is wrapped with masking tape to create a ball like structure to hit the drum. How Tassa is played

Each tassa group contains about 3-4 members. The tassa drum, bass drum and jhaal are all played at the same time to create a steady rhythm. The leader on the tassa drum is called the “cutter”, the cutter plays a variety of different beats while the other tassa drummers plays at a lower volume to keep the sound full, this is called “fulley”. While the fulley drummer keeps a steady rhythm, the bass drum player now follows the cutter while making a complex rhythm. The jhaal player whose role is to rhyme with the group now follows this. The tassa groups are mostly hired to play at wedding functions or a variety of festivals, some groups just play for fun at a variety of occasions such as parties, where everyone joins together to clap and dance. Some names of the beats (hands) are called tikora, wedding hand, nagaara, dingolay, chaubola, steel pan and other classical hands.

Satyanand Maraj Original Tassa Expo LLC Director of Operations/Owner 107-15 112 Street Richmond Hill, NY 11419 Office: 917-379-3062 Email: OriginalTassaExpo@gmail.com