Authentic Making Process
Crafting acoustic drum membranes and traditional leather gear requires painstaking organic chemical processing and acoustic tuning:
1. Raw Hide Sourcing & Sorting:
Artisans source naturally fallen hides of goats, sheep, and buffaloes from pastoral communities. Goat skins are selected for delicate high-pitch drum membranes, while dense buffalo hides are reserved for tension straps and heavy kettledrums.
2. Liming & De-Hairing (Chuna Shodhan):
The raw hides are immersed in earthen pits filled with water and slaked lime (Chuna) for 8 to 14 days. The alkaline lime bath dissolves epidermal fats and loosens hair follicles. The hide is removed, laid across a curved wooden beam, and scraped clean of hair and residual flesh using a blunt two-handled scraper knife (Khurchani).
3. Natural Vegetable Bark Tanning (Babool & Amla Bath):
De-haired hides are submerged in sequential pit baths containing rich natural tannin extracts made from crushed bark of Babool (Acacia nilotica), dried Haritaki fruits (Myrobalan), and Amla. Over 2 to 3 weeks, natural vegetable tannins penetrate deep into the collagen fiber matrix, transforming raw skin into rot-resistant, flexible leather imbued with a warm, natural golden-ochre hue.
4. Manual Staking, Shaving & Membrane Calibration:
The wet tanned leather is stretched taut on wooden drying frames. For drum heads, the artisan uses specialized curved crescent knives (Rambi) to shave the back of the skin with millimeter precision, ensuring completely uniform thickness across the circular acoustic membrane.
5. Drum Head Formation & Bamboo Ring Weaving (Puri Banana):
The shaved skin is wetted and stretched tightly over a flexible hoop made of split bamboo or wild cane (Bent). The leather margin is tucked around the hoop and braided with raw leather thongs, creating a circular drum head known as the 'Puri'.
6. Rawhide Lacing & Tension Web Calibration:
Long, uniform straps (Baddhi) cut from heavy buffalo rawhide are threaded through perimeter eyelets on both drum heads, interlacing back and forth across the body of the drum shell. Wooden cylindrical pegs (Gatta) are inserted underneath the lacing straps, allowing the musician to hammer them up or down to calibrate drum tension and pitch.
7. Application of Acoustic Tuning Paste (Syahi / Kharan):
The crowning acoustic achievement is the application of the black tuning circle (Syahi or Kharan) on the right drum head. The artisan prepares a paste of fine magnetic iron filings, cooked glutinous rice paste, and catechu (Kattha). Applying the paste in thin, concentric circular coats, he bakes each layer under direct sunlight and burnishes it with a smooth river pebble. Once cured, this weighted magnetic center eliminates unwanted high overtones, producing the iconic deep, thunderous bass resonance of the Jharkhand Mandar.
