The frame drum is a instrument of ancient origin with over 4000 years of recorded history around the world.

Few instruments have traveled further than this one. A skin stretched over a circle of wood — that’s all a frame drum is — and yet it carried Sufi mystics into trance in Kurdistan, drove the tarantella across southern Italy, became the rhythmic engine of Brazilian samba, and accompanied the temple priestesses of ancient Sumer over four thousand years ago.

This site maps that journey, country by country, instrument by instrument: the bodhrán, the daff, the doira, the pandeiro, the kanjira, and dozens more — one family of drums, reinvented on every continent it touched.

This website is dedicated to preserving and exploring the roots and traditions of this mosaic of instruments.