If one object sums up Siberian shamanism in the eyes of observers, it is the drum. Ethnographic sources from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries describe it among almost all the peoples of Siberia, from the Evenki to the Sakha, from the Buryats to the Chukchi. It is not merely a musical instrument: for those who use it, it is a being, a vehicle, a map of the world.
Shape and materials
The Siberian drum is generally a frame drum: a circular or oval frame of bent wood with a single hide stretched over it. The hide usually comes from an animal important to the group: reindeer, elk, deer, and sometimes horse in herding regions. Inside the frame there is a structure for holding it, which may be a cross of straps, a wooden or iron bar, and from which rattles, bells or metal pendants are often hung.
Sizes vary greatly. Some drums are small and light, others exceed half a metre in diameter. The oval shape is common in several areas of eastern Siberia, the round one in others. Every detail, from the choice of wood to the number of pendants, could have a precise meaning in that people's tradition.
The beater
The drum is played with a beater, often made of wood and covered on the striking side with hide or fur, which dampens the sound and makes it deeper. In many traditions the beater was not used only for playing: it could be thrown or dropped to read omens, by observing which side it landed on. It was therefore also a tool of divination.
The drum as a mount
One of the most recurrent themes in ethnographic descriptions is the idea that the drum is the shaman's mount. Among the horse-herding peoples of the Altai and southern Siberia, the drum was called, or imagined as, the horse on which the shaman travelled. Among the peoples of the taiga and tundra it could be a reindeer or an elk.
This identification explains why the animal's hide was not simply a material. The animal, in a sense, continued to live in the drum, and its spirit accompanied the shaman. In several traditions a new drum underwent a rite that «animated» it, that is, made it alive and ready for the journey. Without this step it was an object like any other.
The drum as a map of the world
Many drums carry painted figures on the hide, often in red pigments obtained from natural substances. The images represent the cosmos as it was conceived: the sky with the sun and moon, the earth with animals and people, sometimes the lower world. Horizontal lines may divide the surface into zones corresponding to the different worlds.
The drum then becomes a map: the shaman, beating on the hide, symbolically travels through the space depicted on it. Not all drums were painted, and the images varied from people to people and from shaman to shaman, because they often reflected the personal spirits of their user.
Sound and rhythm
The rhythm of the drum accompanies songs and invocations. Sources describe sessions lasting hours, with moments of slow beating and moments of rising intensity, when the shaman made the journey towards the spirits. The sound was thought of as a call to the helper spirits and, at the same time, as the force that sustained the journey.
The metal rattles inside and outside added a continuous jingling. Together with a costume laden with pendants, the drum created a complex soundscape that European observers struggled to describe.
A personal and dangerous object
The drum was not an ordinary object to be lent or sold. It was bound to the shaman for life, and at his or her death it might be destroyed, hung on a tree near the grave or left with the deceased. In some traditions a shaman owned several drums over a lifetime, each corresponding to a stage of the path.
During the era of persecution, first by missionaries and then by the Soviet authorities, many drums were confiscated or destroyed. Some ended up in museums, where they remain today. For indigenous communities these objects have a value far beyond their museum value.
What it teaches us
The study of the drum shows how closely matter and spirit were intertwined in Siberian traditions. A wooden circle and a stretched hide became a living animal, a map of the universe and a bridge between worlds. Studio Esoterico Cornelio invites readers to look at these objects with the eye of a respectful anthropologist: not as tools to imitate, but as testimonies of a coherent and profound worldview.
In short
- The Siberian drum is a frame drum with a single animal hide and an internal grip structure.
- The beater was used for playing and also for reading omens.
- In many traditions the drum was the shaman's mount, horse or reindeer.
- The figures painted on the hide often represented the cosmos and its levels.
- It was a personal object, «animated» by a rite and bound to the shaman's life.
