(Fr. tambour de bois, tambour à fente; Ger. Schlitztrommel).
An idiophone percussion tube or percussion vessel in the classificatory system of Hornbostel and Sachs – not a true drum. It is used for musical or signalling purposes (see Talking drum) and made by cutting, burning or gouging one or more slits in the wall of a hollowed-out piece of wood. Slit-drums vary in size from gigantic, consisting of whole tree-trunks which are sometimes covered with a roof for protection (see illustration), to small portable ones like the temple block. On many slit-drums, especially in Africa, the two sides (or lips) of the slit are carved to different thicknesses so that at least two pitches can be produced. In areas where tonal languages are spoken, this enables the drum to be used for conveying messages by reproducing pitch phonemes, generally as conventional formulae; this is true, for example, of the Igbo regions of Nigeria, where the use of double as well as single slits extends the range of speech patterns that can be imitated. Elsewhere, as in Oceania, signalling codes are made up of arbitrary sequences of long and short beats. Sachs (p.37) discussed the ritual use of the slit-drum and the sexual symbolism implicit in its shape. Slit-drums are sometimes called slit-gongs, a term that Sachs rejected (p.30).
Slit-drums occur in several distinct regions of the world. In China, Korea and Japan they are used as ritual instruments and also in urban theatrical and village ensembles. Recently in China a slit-drum chime was invented for orchestral use comprising a number of muyu slit-drums of differing size tuned to a scale. Slit-drums (sometimes very large ones) may occur among hill tribes in India, for instance in Assam near the border with Myanmar and in one area of Madhya Pradesh. From Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia slit-drum distribution continues into the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines and in a broad band south-eastwards among the Pacific islands stretching as far east as the Cook Islands. Another region of slit-drum use is Central and West Africa stretching from Angola and Zambia in the south to Mali and Senegal in the north-west (Laurenty recorded the names for over 100 different slit-drums in former Zaïre). Pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas also used slit-drums, of which the best-known surviving types are the teponaztli of Aztec Mexico and the tun or tunkul of the Mayan Indians of Guatemala. Elsewhere in this region slit-drums have been reported in Cuba (several types), Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru. Small slit-drums are used in Western dance and jazz bands, most being simplified forms of the Chinese muyu or like the rectangular orchestral Woodblock.
SachsH
L.J.P. Gaskin: A Select Bibliography of Music in Africa (London, 1965), 44–8
J.S. Laurenty: Les tambours à fente de l’Afrique centrale (Tervuren, 1968)
PETER R. COOKE