Tombak and daf

Persian music has two drums that matter above all. The tombak, also called tonbak, dombak or zarb, is a goblet-shaped drum carved from a single block of wood, usually mulberry or walnut, with a skin stretched across the wide mouth and the narrow end left open. It is held horizontally across the lap and played with the fingers and palms of both hands. The daf is a large frame drum, a wide wooden hoop covered on one side with skin, played upright in both hands.

The tombak

The tombak produces a remarkable range of sounds from a small surface: a deep resonant stroke at the centre, a sharp crack at the rim, rolls, snaps of the fingers and fingernail flicks. For most of its history it was an accompanying instrument. It kept the metre in metric pieces and the dance songs that close a classical suite. It is also the drum of the zurkhaneh, the traditional gymnasium, where the morshed beats a large zarb and sings verses from the Shahnameh as the athletes train.

In the mid-twentieth century Hossein Tehrani (1912–1974) transformed the tombak’s standing. He developed its technique, wrote about it and showed that it could hold its own as a solo voice. His pupils, and theirs, built on his work until the tombak became an instrument of virtuoso solo performance and ensemble writing. Today ensembles made up entirely of tombak players perform composed works, and the instrument is studied around the world. Its notation, developed by Tehrani and his successors, records not only rhythms but the hand and finger used for each stroke.

The daf

The daf is one of the oldest drums of the Near East, and frame drums appear in Persian painting for centuries. In its Kurdish form, the most familiar today, the inner rim is lined with small metal rings that shiver and rattle with every stroke. In Kurdistan, and especially in Sanandaj and the surrounding region, the daf is the instrument of the zikr ceremonies of Qaderi and other Sufi orders, where dervishes chant the names of God to its rising rhythm. It is also played in Kurdish celebrations and at the Yarsan gatherings of Kermanshah.

From the 1980s onward the daf moved from the lodge to the concert stage of Persian classical and fusion music, carried there by Kurdish musicians and ensembles. Its power in a large hall, and its visual drama, made it widely popular. The revival also brought many women players to the instrument, in Iran and abroad, and the daf is now one of the instruments most associated with contemporary Iranian ensembles. Frame drums under related names, dap, def and doira, are played from the Caucasus to Central Asia, each in its own tradition.