Arabic Percussion

Last Monday two guests artists, Met’hat Mamdua and Khaled Abu Higazzi came to my Arabic music theory class class to give a lecture on Arabic percussive instruments. Mr. Met’hat is a very accomplished tabla player, who plays for Arabic singers all around Egypt - including Amr Diab! He also is involved in a Turkish band that recently played at the Sakia el Sawy this month. Mr. Khaled, who gave most of the lecture, specializes in the riqq and also performs regularly with ensembles and Arabic singers. After the lecture, which is summarized below, both musicians accompanied the class for rehearsal for our concert next Thursday.

Khaled started off the lecture by introducing the main percussive instruments of Arabic music. There are three main instruments, the tabla, the duff, and the riqq. The tabla is a goblet shaped hand drum that can come in up to four different sizes. The largest size is called a dahola, and the smallest is played by acclaimed percussionist Raquy Danziger. The standard Egyptian tabla weighs about six to seven kilos. The drum head, or the ra’ima as it is referred to, used to be made of fish skin, but now is made from synthetic materials. The reason for this change was the constant hassle of retuning the fish skin head as the material would stretch. Drummers would have to heat up their drums on heating pads to make sure the drum head would not stretch to be out of tune. Now, with the synthetic head, drummers do not have to have that hassle or worry about temperature change as much as in the past.

Players lay the tabla on their lap with the head of the drum facing in towards the opposite knee. The doum, or the strong beat, is normally played with the right hand giving an even base tone. The tak, or the weak beat, can be played by both the left or the right hand and in many different styles that include the normal tak sound on the very edge of the drum, or within rolls, pops, and snaps. The third type of sound is ‘es’. Es is the filling of silence between the doums and teks, or the heartbeat of a darb (darb is Arabic for rhythm).

The next instrument Khaled introduced was the riqq. The riqq, or the Arabic tambourine as it is sometimes called, is a small frame drum played upright with two hands. The doum and tek are opposite of the tabla as the doum is played on the edge of the drum frame, and the tek is caught in the middle of the drum. The es is mostly emphasized by the galagel, the five groups of four sets of cymbals set around the frame of the riqq. Like the tabla, the riqq used to have a ra\ima made of fish skin, but now it is synthetic. Another interesting feature of the riqq is that its frame is tunable. Players may tune a riqq higher or lower for different sounds throughout a piece.

The third instrument introduced was the duff. The duff is a large frame drum that keeps the heart beat of a darb. Duff players do not play ‘es’, rather they play the doums and teks of a darb whilst the tabla and riqq players elaborate. The duff is mostly recognized with the zeffa, a wedding procession in which a distinct darb is played for the bride and groom as they walk together through family and friends being presented as newly weds. A cousin to the duff, the maz’har is a duff with cymbals. The maz’har is slightly smaller than the duff, but both are considerably bigger than the riqq.

Arabic percussive sections change according to the type of ensemble. The two most popular ensembles are the takht and the firqa. A takht is a small chamber ensemble that consists of a qanoon (similar to a zither), kamanga (violin), ney (wind instrument), oud (the grandfather to the lute), and percussion instrument, most often the riqq. In these ensembles and smaller firqas the riqq is the lead percussion. When in larger ensembles, such as a firqa, the tabla becomes the lead instrument for the percussion section. In addition to this, the riqq is usually featured in pieces with longer darbs, while tablas are mainly used for shorter darbs and solos.