In our long rich history percussion instruments have played a key role in our historic cultural development through the ages. Additionally a huge modern culture exists around percussion drums that have both a formal and ritual aspect to it. Below is a very brief overview on how percussion instruments especially percussion drums have played a vital role in culture and society throughout history straight through to modern times.
If we look at our most primal instruments, percussion drums would certainly be up there. With their beautifully sounding rhythmic qualities that resonate with all of us. It is the sheer naturalness of these instruments such as percussion drums that have endeared them to us for centuries.
Going back through the ages, the first instrument ever created was in fact the percussion drums. Up until that point the only “musical instrument” that existed was the simple human voice. It is widely though that percussion drums were made out of logs, that were hollowed out to create the most fantastic sounding tones that people could dance and sing to.
As human capabilities got greater, there was further diversification, and this created the ability for people to add more sounds such as bells to instruments. The regionalism of drums also resulted in a wide variety of percussion drums each with noticeably different sounds and certainly hugely different designs. This resulted in a huge array of different sounding instruments that all had the same origins.
In recent years, the latest materials and technology have been engineered to produce a plethora of majestic sounds at volumes unobtainable in past years. We have also seen the introduction of electronic drum instruments that lend a different style of music to that of that raw sound of percussion drums.
Some, such as Native Americans, use drumming as a central aspect of many rituals and ceremonies. Many informal drum circles also exist. Some are casual, meeting informally to provide drummers with a space in which to jam and collaborate. Others are more formal, meeting for spiritual or ceremonial reasons. Percussion instruments also form the basis for various genres of modern music. Rap and hip-hop originate from spoken word combined with percussive tracks, with little or no additional instrumentation used. Percussion is a key element of dance and other forms of electronic music, providing the pounding rhythms that inundate thousands of clubs nightly.
Percussion even forms the basis of drum-and-bass, a type of electronic music derived heavily from complex percussive rhythms. The percussion drum, while deceptively simple, has a fascinating history that extends from before history into modern times. The culture resulting from that history is equally rich, providing an environment for the expression of many differing types of creativity and the exploration of vastly new avenues of the human spirit.
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