30th January 2018 at the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh.
The Tom Drum or Tom-Tom is a cylindrical drum without snare wires which makes a booming, resonant sound which can vary in pitch. One or more of different depths, either mounted on a floorstand or on a rack above the Bass Drum, are part of the Drum Kit used in Jazz and Popular music. It is related to drums found in East Asia. The name echoes the Hindi Tam-Tam (with similar names in Sinhalese and Malay) and imitates the sound of the drum. The first Tom Toms were brought to the USA by Chinese and other immigrant groups in the second half of the 19 century. Then under the name “Chee Foo” Tom-Toms, they were then imported from China by American drum companies in the early 1920s (with a company logo added for US distribution). Jazz bands such as those of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington used them to create an “oriental" or pseudo-African “jungle” sound. They were frequently painted colourfully, and initially had pigskin heads tacked or glued in place and thus could not be tuned. In 1922 Ludwig & Ludwig Drum Company produced the first drumset with two fully tunable Tom-Toms.and in 1930 Leedy’s introduced of the first American-made Tom-Toms. It was Gene Krupa in the 1930s who did much to popularise the Tom Drum.
This instrument was made in the middle of the twentieth century by Boosey and Hawkes in Britain.
Tom Drums are assigned the number 211.212.1 in the Hornbostel-Sachs classification of musical instruments (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornbostel-Sachs ), indicating:
2 = Membranophones. Instruments where the sound is primarily produced by the vibration of a string or strings that are stretched between fixed points.
21 = Struck Membranophones. Sound is produced by hitting the drumskin with a hand or object.
211 = Directly Struck Membranophones. Instruments in which the membrane is struck directly.
211.2 = Tubular Drums. Instruments in which the body is tubular.
211.21 = Cylindrical Drums. Instruments in which the body has the same diameter at the middle and end.
211.212 = Instruments which have two usable membranes.
211.212.1 = single instruments.
