Tassa
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Tassa drums are found within societies of the Indo-Caribbean people. The word "tassa" comes from the persian "tash" and hindi "tasha", which both mean kettle drum. The drum is indo-caribbean version of indian and persian precursors. The tassa is beatifully made by tightly covering a clay shell with goat skin. Early tassa were covered in monkey skin as well. When ready to play the goat skin is heated by aid of a fire to tighten the head making the pitch higher. This process is called "standing it up". When you stand one up, the pitch can stay high for 20-30 minutes. Now tassa drums are even made by cutting an empty propane gas tank in half and attaching a thick plastic skin to the top of it with nuts and bolts, welding it shut. Now , similar sounds can be achieved without heating up the tassa drums anymore. When played in a tassa group, one tassa is the "cutter" and the other is the "fulley" or "fuller", as their role is to make the rhythm or "taal" sound more full. The fulley is playing a steady rhythm while the cutter plays the more intricate rhythms and improvisational. A large bass drum, called a baydum, usually made from a mango tree trunk, is also played filling in a deep sound and in addition there is someone with a jhanj or jhaal (brass cymbals) playing in the group also. Tassa drumming can usually be found at a various Indo-Cultural events such as Hosay, Hindu weddings, or even parties and certain clubs.
The tassa drums are played with sticks made from wild cane (called "chob", hindi for cane sticks) or fiberglass. The sticks can either have very tightly wound masking tape at the top or the sap from a balata tree wound into a ball can form the head of a stick. When played, these pliant sticks are struck on the head of the drum and accomplish a unique sound because the flexibility of the stick is responsible for the roll rather than the regressive bouncing action of the head of the stick.
Modern tassa drums are now made of metal 'fiberglass' clay pots with a plastic head that is tightened with screws or even a plastic head that is tied on to the pot. These last longer and do not have to be adjusted as frequently. Tassa groups can be found in Florida, New York, The Netherlands and Canada in addition to Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Suriname, and various other places where the Indo-Caribbean community are found.
The rhythms ("taal" (hindi) or colloquial "hands")are quite complex and each have many variations. Some basic hands are: tikora, wedding tikora, wedding hand, nagaara, dingolay, steel pan, chau bola (hindi for "4 words", as this is a 4 beat rhythm), kalinaa, khemta, and bhajan. Hosay (Muharram) festival rhythms include: saada mahaatam, chalta mahaatam, teen choppa, and nabi sarwar.
