History and Evolution of the Eskimo drum(Yuraq drum)
In rural Alaska, there has always been eskimo dances, Yuraq's. The main instruments of these dances is the Drum and voice. There isn't much surviving information of how the drums were made originally, or when they first came around. But it is a lot older than first thought. The information taken from online sources focuses on Inuit drums, while I'm focusing on the Yup'ik culture specifically.
Over the thousands of years, the tools and material's to create these instruments have changed.
Hunter, Ashley, and Jacob Isaac. Yuraq Drums, Marshall, Alaska, 13 Oct. 2021.
Over many years, the ways that the drums were made has evolved little, only the tools and ways they were made are different.
First let's talk about the basic yuraq drum is made. It's made with dried, stretched skin, which is usually seal skin, stapled tightly to a round wooden frame and is hit by a long skinny stick.
As you read, here's a performance from Byron Nicholai: (3) Angyaurluaqa Ayagali - Yuraq - YouTube where he uses a drum with modern materials and with the canvas material being tied to the wooden frame. The song he plays with the drum and dances to was written by his cousin and is titled "Angyaurluaqa Ayagali" and was made in 2019 and another song that is famous around the villages in Alaska, which was made by Byron Nicholai once again: (3) I am Yup'ik. - YouTube. The second song is titled "Cama-i" and was made in 2014
Before my godparents passed away and their belongings were burned, they used to tell stories of how the elder's during the time, when they were young, made their drums.
The original drums were made of different types of wood, dried animal skin, and a thin, smoothed stick as a drumstick. The skin would be stretched over the circular wood and pressed down and held in place with small, sharp pieces of bone, a lot of the time, they would even be sewed to the wood using sinew with a small bone as the needle, but tying the sinew around the circumference of the hoop is most common. There are some people who still make the drums the traditional way today. In Emmonak, there is someone who makes the drums with seal skin-or the skin lining of a beluga whale- with carved drift wood for the hoop, handle and stick. 
The original traditional way that the drums were made was all done by hand, the carving of the wood and the drying of the skin and material.
The modern day tools used is premade wood ordered from wood cutters, where the wood is brought in from farms that grow wood to be used for construction. The wood is processed through the facility until it's a thin 1x2 or 1x1 strip of wood. The maker of the drum uses steam to soften the wood and a curving machine or a specifically designed construction table that the drum maker made themselves to easily bend the wood and keep it in place until it dries and keeps the round shape. After the wood dries, a handle is connected and held in place with either tightly wound around the hoops ends or with a small bolt. The skin or canvas type material is then stretched around the hoop and is stapled in place or, like in the modern example photo is secured with more string tightly woven around the diameter of the hoop. To make the string hold in place, the maker could also add a carved groove through the middle of the outside of the hoop. The drum is one of the simplest instruments with a lot of work that has to be done to make them, securing the traditional material requiring a lot of work just to hunt a seal or whale and the traditional use of finding the perfect drift wood taking a lot of luck to find.
Going through the history of the drum, there isn't much to find from online sources, the only one that was sticking out was the one from the website Science Nordic, of a museum based in Greenland at the Greenland National Museum and Archives where they show a reconstructed Saqqaq drum found in Greenland.
The oldest recording of any eskimo dance that I've been able to find is the 1987 Yuraq where the Gambell, Little Diomede and King Island dancers are at the village armory (I haven't been able to source out which village it is). There is little information about the song's sung in the video, and even with the help of my grandmother, she wasn't able to figure out which songs they are either. Which means that the video didn't take place in the Lower Yukon region and I have no family who knows the people involved so I am unable to figure out the names and the dates they (the songs) were made. The link to the recording is in the cited sources. Their drums were made with seal skin and the stomach lining of a whale, and you can tell this because the drummers oil the drum between songs, which is meant to keep the drum sounding the same as well as keeping the material from drying out and breaking. The traditional skin drums did not have natural ways to keep the material from drying out and breaking, and modern canvas type material doesn't need to be oiled because of the way it is produced from plastic and cloth type materials that don't decay from being dry.
With the build of the materials, and there being the lack of the need to oil, as well as there being easier and more consistent ways to make the drums, the maker of the drum is able to make the drum where it has higher or lower pitches of the tone by purposely making the cover material looser or tighter without worry of the material ripping. This means that the newer, modern material drums have a higher range.
The dynamics of the drum has also shifted, where hitting the newer material harder when it's built to have a higher pitch, creates a louder dynamic. It's harder to hear the differences of these when there are multiple going on at a time because the sound of the drums beating at the same time has a very rich sound, which often covers up the rich sound of the singers who are playing the drums.
Growing up, I often didn't care to listen to the yuraq singers and drum players, because my village suffered assimilation where the youth lost the ability to talk and listen to their native language, and I was no exception. When I used to attend the yuraq's with my parents or my grandmother, I would usually only be there for the ticket raffles that they often did before and after the performances, because I couldn't understand what was being sung, I wouldn't appreciate the work it took to make it, or the stories that these songs were telling. My primary reaction isn't so much worrying about how the drum has evolved, which it did so little of, but of what became of the modern day yuraq. Before, when the villages were only about 300, 200, or even 50 people in the village, the yuraq dances often brought these villages together to learn, sing, and be with family they hadn't seen in a long time. Now a days, they just bring the individual villages together, with there being no more larger attendances from the other villages. Before, they used to do the Yuraq as a celebration for someone's first catch, the birth of a child, the naming of a child from someone in the community who has passed before them; and now it is just for the basic celebration of being together. Hell, even now, we've lost so much culture that if I returned in time and told my great grandmother that I'm 21 and I haven't had my First Dance, she would have nunuuq'd (scolded) me every single day until I did my first.
Cited:
HyperLinks
Byron Nicholai in Nome (Full Performance) - Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISdHv-
a_wak.
Grønnow, Bjarne. ScienceNordic, 31 Mar. 2012, https://sciencenordic.com/anthropology-archaeology-
arctic/inuit-drum-history-longer-than-realised/1463347.
How It's Made - Construction Wood - Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrJas4_L4Wo.
Interview done on local VHF radio
“INSTRUMENTS.” Yupik-Inuit-Music, https://btrail21.wixsite.com/yupik-inuit-music/instruments.
YouTube, YouTube, 17 July 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAKW349w6IM&t=232s.
What an awesome story and history lesson you provided. I really enjoyed how you went in detail in the process of making these drums and how the newer ones can provide different pitches. The thought in the complete process of making the drum is just amazing. You have hunting involved, cutting down trees, stretching hides, tanning the hides, and forming the drum.
ReplyDeleteWow I loved this story. It’s so interesting how certain cultures use certain instruments and how this was passed down from generations. I love that this instrument is still around and is able to be made stronger with new techniques. I will have to look up a video to listen to this instrument. Thank you for the pictures and all of the information.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a great idea to use something from your ancestry to learn more about. I really liked hearing about how the drums were made. My elementary music teacher was Native Alaskan and she had us all play on the modern drums you talked about to learn rhythm while she played on her older drum that was handmade. She also had an even older one that she would bring out to let us see, but it was too old to play on without damaging it. It was cool to see how even a simple drum changed over the years.
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