Double-headed drum, with baked clay body and laced skin heads, found among Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian Ādivāsī groups as well as non-Ādivāsī musicians throughout East-Central India, including the states of Orissa, southern Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The size and shape of the madar vary depending on the group and geographic area. The two most common shapes are barrel-shaped and conical (straight or slightly waisted). In both the right-hand head is smaller, and higher in pitch, than the left.
The hollow shell of the madar is a thin wall of baked clay whitewashed with white clay or slaked lime. For added strength cowhide lacings about 2 mm wide are pasted around the shell in close parallel bands. Monkey hide is preferred for the right head, but has become scarce so that goatskin may be substituted for it. The left head is usually made of calfhide. The skins are held in place by plaited straw hoops and a strip of skin about 1 cm wide overlapping the outer edge of each head. The skins and hoops are tied in a close network of lacings which runs the length of the drum. Additional thongs of cowhide running from one head to the other hold the skins permanently at the required tension. The right head is usually treated to within 3 or 4 cm of its edge with many layers of a permanent paste of clay and a grain, typically rice. Each layer is rubbed well with a stone and allowed to dry. The centre of the left head is covered 1–4 cm from its edge with several, more temporary, layers of the same paste, applied with the hand, without rubbing, and allowed to dry. The left head is decorated with painted geometric designs, and the entire drum is often wrapped in a colourful cloth.
Although the madar is primarily associated with Ādivāsī groups, its shell is made by members of the Kumhār (potter) caste and its heads made and attached by members of one of the area’s leather-working castes (such as the Mūcī, Ghasī Mahali, Turi or Gorāit). The player, usually a man, holds the drum horizontally before him, slung around his neck by a leather or cotton cord. For many Ādivāsī groups the drum’s presence is essential at the village dancing-ground. Madar players dance as they play, swinging the drum in front of them, turning with it, and bending forward to lower it nearly to the ground. In Orissa and some parts of West Bengal the drum is also part of the percussion ensemble which accompanies the chau (cho) dance-drama and the nacini dance. Madar rhythmic patterns and strokes are vocalized in syllables which vary from village to village and from drummer to drummer.
The jaspuria madar is the principal drum of many communities of musicians in southern Bihar. Its barrel-shaped, or cylindro-barrel-shaped, shell can range from 60 to 118 cm in length (on average about 70 cm). Half the instrument, from the right head to the centre, is roughly cylindrical or slightly conical, but from the centre the shell widens to a bulge at approximately three-quarters the distance from the right head, and then narrows slightly towards the left head. Both heads of the jaspuria madar are flush with the outer rims of their hoops. Typically, both heads are left undecorated.
The jaspuria madar is traditionally associated with the Ghasī caste of leather-workers, who play it, make it and claim to have invented it. In the past they reserved the drum for accompanying janāni jhumar (‘women’s jhumar’) – group singing and dancing during the monsoon season – using other drums such as the dholkī in other seasons. In the last 30 or 40 years the madar has been taken up by players of high-status castes and has become the principal drum throughout the year to accompany staged solo singing and most genres of dancing.
The straight or slightly waisted conical types of madar are more common throughout the east-central Ādivāsī belt than are the barrel-shaped. Approximately half the drum, from the right head to the centre, is cylindrical or even narrows slightly to a shallow waist. From the centre the shell expands conically towards the left head. Because of its shape, the outer lacings do not touch the drum’s body, giving it the illusion of a strict conical shape. The rim around the right head is built up with bamboo strips, so that the head is recessed by 2 or 3 cm from the drum’s outer edge.
In southern Bihar this type, of variable size, is associated with different Ādivāsī groups who know it by various names of which the most widespread are the khel and the dumang. The Uraon khel is the largest of these drums, ranging from 60 to 85 cm in length (usually about 60 cm); the right head is 25 cm in diameter, the left 35 cm. It is the most popular drum among the Uraon people, who use it for group singing and in the jadur, karam and jātra communal dances.
The Mundā people of southern Bihar use two madar-type drums of different sizes, both called dumang in Mundāri; one is about 35 cm long, and the other, perhaps more common, about 50 to 66 cm. Local non-Ādivāsī musicians refer to the smaller as jhālda madar and the larger as mūcī madar. The heads are attached and treated in the same manner as those of the jaspuria madar, but the paste covers a larger area of the right head. During the first few decades of the 20th century the dumang was the most important drum in the percussion ensemble that accompanied Mundāri processions and communal dancing and singing in the village dancing-ground. The full ensemble consisted of dumang players (the lead drummers), with the instruments nagara (kettledrum), rabaga (double-headed drum), perhaps some dulki (double-headed drum) and cua or manjīrā (cup cymbals). The dulki has gradually replaced the dumang as the lead drum in the dancing-ground. The dumang, however, still holds a position of honour in Mundā processions, rituals, festivals and in song texts, where it is often paired with the dulki and sometimes with the rabaga.
See also India, §IX, 2.
S.C. Roy: The Orāons of Chōtā Nāgpur (Calcutta, 1915), 181, 284, 288–9
J. Hoffmann and A.van Emelen: Encyclopaedia mundarica (Patna,1938–50), 1110–11
K.S. Kothari: Indian Folk Musical Instruments (New Delhi, 1968), 41–2
O. Prasad: Munda: Music and Dance (diss., Ranchi U., 1971), 70
L. Miśra: Bhāratīya sangīt vādya (New Delhi, 1973), 175
B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India: their History and Development (Calcutta, 1978), 95–6
CAROL M. BABIRACKI/R