Large single-headed frame drum of North Africa. The head, which is usually goatskin, is stretched over a flat wooden hoop usually no more than 15 cm wide. The diameter of the rim varies but is rarely more than 60 cm across the head. The frame usually has a single bored thumb-hole, which facilitates one method of playing. Very often, three or four gut or nylon snares are attached to the inner side of the drum, and these resonate against the skin when the drum is played. Occasionally jingles are attached through slots made around the frame. At many ambient temperatures the skin is slack, and is tightened either by placing the drum in direct sunlight or by heating it over a brazier.
The bendīr is played in a variety of ways, but is most commonly held upright against the body, supported by the left hand with the thumb through the thumb-hole and the fingers resting on the skin of the drum. By releasing or applying pressure to the skin with these fingers, open and closed tones can be struck. The head is beaten with a flat right hand, either in the centre, which produces a relatively deep note, or at the edge, producing a higher pitch. (These positions are reversed for left-handed players.) The bendīr can also be held between the legs or against the chest and beaten with both hands.
The bendīr is such a common instrument in the Maghrib that it is employed in many kinds of music, either singly or as an ensemble of benader. However, it is an instrument of low status, largely found in rural traditions and women's musics; instruments bearing snares and jingles are particularly associated with these musics, as the loud buzzing overtones are considered to be sensually stimulating and therefore unsuitable for urban art music or men's religious music.
C. Woodson: The Effect of a Snare on the Tone of a Single-Headed Frame Drum, the Moroccan Bendīr, Selected Reports, ii/1 (1974), 10317
V. Doubleday: The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical Instruments and Power, EthM, xliii (1999), 1014
T. Langlois: Heard but Unseen: the Female Aissawa Musicians of Oujda, Morocco, Music and Anthropology, iv (1999) 〈www.muspe.unibo.it/m&a〉
TONY LANGLOIS