| Name | Image | Tradition | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tabor |  | England | Tabor, or tabret, refers to a portable snare drum played with one hand. It has been used in the military as a marching instrument, and has been used as accompaniment in parades and processions. A tabor has a cylindrical wood shell, two skin heads tightened by rope tension, a leather strap, and an adjustable gut snare. Tabor and Pipe is a pair of instruments, popular since Mediæval times and played by a single player, consisting of a tabor (a portable drum) played with one hand and a specially designed fipple flute ( a three-hole pipe) played with the other hand. |
| Taiko |  | Japan | Taiko (太鼓) means simply "drum" in Japanese (etymologically "great" or "wide drum"). Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums (和太鼓, 'wa-daiko', "Japanese drum", in Japanese) and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming (sometimes called more specifically, "kumi-daiko" (組太鼓). |
| Talking Drum |  | Ghana | The talking drum is a West African drum whose pitch can be regulated to the extent that it is said the drum "talks". The player puts the drum under one shoulder and beats the instrument with a stick. A talking drum player raises or lowers the pitch by squeezing or releasing the drum's strings with the upper arm. This can produce highly informative sounds to convey complicated messages. |
| Tambora |  | Venezuela | The Tambora (from the Spanish word tambor, meaning "drum") is a name for a group of Afro-Caribbean musical instruments. Its origins came along with the African slaves brought by the Europeans during the colonization of The Americas. It is used in many Latin American countries musical styles; in the Dominican musical folkloric styles and merengue, the Cumbia in Colombia , and the Venezuelan gaita. In Venezuelan Gaita music, the tambora is a one-headed drum played with sticks. The player can sit on it or put it on a stand to perform rhythms on the instrument. |
| Tambori |  | Spain | The tambori is a percussion instrument of about 10 centimetres diameter, a small shallow cylinder formed of metal or wood with a drumhead of skin. Its usual function is to accompany the playing of the flabiol in a cobla band, beating the rhythm of the sardana dance, which is the traditional dance of Catalonia, a region of North-East Spain. It is attached to the elbow of the left arm and struck with a drumstick called a broqueta held by the right hand, while the flabiol can be played with the left hand of the same player. The image shows a tambori (left) together with a flabiol. |
| Tamboril |  | Uruguay | Tamboril is a barrel-shaped drum. It has specific name according to its size and function: chico (small, high timbre, marks the tempo), repique (medium, syncopation and improvisation) and piano (large, low timbre, melody). Tamboriles are made of wood with animal skins that are rope-tuned or fire-tuned minutes before the performance. They are worn at the waist with the aid of a shoulder strap called talig or talín and played with one stick and one hand. |
| Tanggu |  | China | Tanggu (堂鼓) is a medium-sized barrel drum from China. The drum is covered with two drumheads of cowhide or pig skin. Four lateral iron rings around the shell allow the drum to be vertically suspended in a frame. It is struck with a pair of wooden beaters. The drum is traditionally used with other instruments like luo (gong) and bo (cymbals) in folk festivals and ensembles. The Jing Tanggu in used in Peking opera. |
| Taphon |  | Thailand | The taphon (Thai: ตะโพน) is a traditional drum of Thailand. It is barrel-shaped, with two heads, and is played by the hands and fingers of both hands. It is used in the classical Thai wind-and-percussion ensemble called piphat. It is considered a particularly sacred instrument in the Thai culture, and is generally kept in a higher place than other instruments. |
| Teponaztli |  | Mexico | A teponaztli is a type of slit drum used in central Mexico by the Aztecs and related cultures. Teponaztli are made of hollow hardwood logs, often fire-hardened. Like most slit drums, teponaztli have three slits on their topside, cut into the shape of an "H". The resultant tongues are then struck with rubber balls on mallets, which were often made of deer antlers. Since the tongues are of different lengths, or carved into different thicknesses, the teponaztli produces 2 different pitches. Teponaztli were usually decorated with relief carvings of various deities or with abstract designs, and were even carved into the shapes of creatures or humans. The image is an illustration of the "One Flower" ceremony, from the 16th century. The two drums are the teponaztli (foreground) and the huehuetl (background). |
| Thavil |  | India | The thavil is a barrel shaped percussion instrument from South India. It is used in folk music and Carnatic music, often accompanying the nadaswaram. The thavil consists of a cylindrical shell hollowed out of a solid block of wood. Layers of animal skin (water buffalo on the right, goat on the left) are stretched across the two sides of the shell using hemp hoops attached to the shell. The right face of the instrument has a larger diameter than the left side, and the right drum head is stretched very tightly, while the left drum head is kept loose to allow pitch bending. |
| Thon |  | Cambodia | The thon is a goblet-shaped drum from Cambodia. It is played with the hands. |
| Timbales |  | United States | Timbales (or tymbales) are shallow single-headed drums, shallower in shape than single-headed tom-toms, and usually much higher tuned. The player (known as a timbalero) uses a variety of stick and hand strokes, rim shots, and rolls on the skins to produce a wide range of percussive expression during solos and at transitional sections of music, and usually plays the shells of the drum or auxiliary percussion such as a cowbell or cymbal to keep time at other parts of the song. Timbales were invented in the early 20th century as a more portable replacement for the standard timpani used in Afro-Cuban orchestras. |
| Timila |  | India | Timila is an hour-glass drum from Kerala, South India. It is made from polished jackwood. The drumheads made of calf hide are held together by leather braces which are also twined round the waist of the drum. This mechanism helps in adjusting the tension and controlling the sound. A Panchavadyam performance is begun with Timila Pattu and ends with the Timila Idachal thus making Timila a very important component of Panchavadyam. |
| Timpani |  | Germany | Timpani (also known colloquially as kettle drums) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl commonly made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet. Unlike most drums, they produce a definite pitch when struck. |
| Tom-tom drum |  | United States | A tom-tom is a cylindrical drum with no snare. The tom-tom originates from Native American or Asian cultures. The tom-tom drum was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Today two "power" depth tom-toms of 12x10 (12" diameter by 10" depth) and 13x11 is the most common hanging tom configuration, and would be considered standard by most drummers. |
| Tombak |  | Iran | A tombak (also known as tonbak, donbak, dombak and zarb, in Persian تمبک) is a goblet drum from Persia (ancient Iran). It is considered the principal percussion instrument of Persian music. The skin is usually glued to the body. Goat or lamb skin is the most popular material for the skin. The body of a tonbak is made of mulberry wood which gives it its distinctive sound. The body may be decorated with carved furrows. The throat is almost cylindrical and it is connected from top to the body. The throat and the small opening together are in the form of a trumpet. The large opening is in the top and is covered by the skin. |
| Tsuri-daiko |  | Japan | Tsuri-daiko (釣太鼓)is a Japanese drum used in gagaku music, a type of Japanese classical music that has been performed at the Imperial court for several centuries. It is a drum on a stand with ornately painted head, played with a padded stick. The tsuri-daiko image was taken by Zhang Yuwen in Beijing, China, May 2007. |
| Tsuzumi |  | Japan | The tsuzumi (鼓), also known as kotsuzumi, is a Japanese shoulder drum. It consists of a wooden body shaped like an hourglass, and it is tought with two drum heads with cords that can be squeezed or released to increase or decrease the tension of the heads respectively. This mechanism allows the player to raise or lower the pitch of the drum while playing, not unlike the African talking drum. The tsuzumi is the only Japanese drum that is struck with the hands. The tsuzumi plays roles in both Noh and Kabuki theater music, but it is also used in Japanese folk music. |
| Udu |  | Nigeria | The udu is an African pottery-drum originated by the Igbo and Hausa peoples of Nigeria. In the Igbo language, udu means vessel. Actually being a water jug with an additional hole, it was played by women for ceremonial uses. Usually the udu is made of clay. The instrument is played by hand and produces a special and unique bass sound by quickly hitting the big hole. Furthermore the whole corpus can be played by fingers. Today it is widely used by percussionists in different music styles. Fascinated by the possibilities and the various pitches of the usual Udu, Behnam Samani, a master in Persian percussion, created a new form, which still keeps the soft round harmonious bass tones yet opens the way to new inspiration and experience. |
| Udukai |  | India | The udukai is a hour-glass shaped, small drum with a thong attached to the narrow waist. It is used in folk music and prayers in South India. |
| Vertical Slit Drum |  | Vanuatu | Traditional music in Vanuatu was limited to the human voice with rhythmic accompaniment from slit drums. The remarkable, large, vertical slit gongs which symbolize Vanuatu, and are to be seen in ethnological institutions around the world, were used only for communication. The image shows 3 wooden slit drums from Vanuatu, Bernice P. Bishop Museum. |
| Waist Drum |  | China | A waist drum (or yaogu) is a drum used by Chinese people during the waist-drum dancing to greet the Spring Festival (first day of the first lunar month) and the Lantern Festival (15th of the first lunar month.) A dancer with a red drum tied to her waist holds a drumstick with red silk, beating the drum while dancing. The rhythmical drum sound and graceful dance show the straightforward and uninhibited character of villagers in northern Shanxi Province and is an expression of their happy and passionate feelings. |
| Zabumba |  | Brazil | A zabumba is a type of bass drum used in Brazilian music. It is made of boards of wood glued to alternating shafts of metal inside a cylindrical box, with one or two skins stretched atop it. It is played with sticks. The zabumba is used in the genres of forró, Coco, baião, xaxado and xote. |
| Zambomba |  | Spain | Zambomba is a friction drum from Spain. It is a percussion instrument consisting of a single membrane stretched over a sound box, whose sound is produced by the player causing the membrane to vibrate by friction. Zambomba can be made from a variety of materials and rubbed either with a rod or with rope. It is particularly associated with Christmas when it used to accompany the singing of carols. The Zambomba features in the 1895 painting titled “Monaguillo tocando la zambomba” by Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench, a Spanish painter. |
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