Art of drum making vanishing fast
Play
The Oh-si, an open-ended drum with a long body, and the Doe-pat, or short drum, are traditional musical instruments that are widely used for religious events and other social occasions in Myanmar.
Shan State, Mandalay and Minhla are the best-known places for the drum-making business in the country, with those made in Mandalay drums mostly used in the northern part of the country. Minhla drums, meanwhile, are popular in Magway Region, Chin State, the outskirts of Rakhine State,and the inner Ayeyawady Region.
Minhla is a town located in Magway Region where Prince Kanaung ordered the building of Minhla fort in 1223. Since then, the art of playing the Oh-si and Doe-pat drums spread to Minhla from Mandalay as the workers building the fort at the time, enjoyed playing drums during their leisure time.
The Minhla fort took three years to build. During that time, the workers celebrated all their festivals classical instruments. Since some knew how to make the instruments themselves, many later became drum-makers, and as this business expanded many started believing the drums originated from Minhla. By the 1950s, the culture of drum playing became very popular.
Now, however, there is only one person who owns a drum-making business in Minhla.
“The making of drums has been on the decline since 2000. I’ll do it for as long as I can and also want to teach the art to those who want to study it. This is traditional kind of work,” drum-maker Tin Yu said.
The drop in the popularity of drum making in Minhla has been put down to the industrialisation of the areas, with skilled artisans opting to work in oil fields, where they could earn as much as 10,000 to 15,000 kyat (Bt330 to Bt500) a day. As drum makers they barely made 3,000 to 5,000 kyat a day.
The drums these days are usually made from rain tree, neem, red-silk cotton, gum-kino and other soft wood, while the surface is usually made from cow or goat leather.
“The raw leather is burned under the sun. If we use salt in the drying process, it may evaporate and the sound won’t be good. We have to adjust the thickness of the leather we use, depending on the compactness of the wood. We also have to adjust the sound by scraping the surface. That work needs to be very skilful,” Tin Yu explained.
An Oh-si or Doe-pat drum goes for about 50,000 kyat.
