Type, stringing and sound of the Djembé

The following is a summary of the most important tips gained during 12 years of personal experience as well as know-how from the country of origin of the Djembé. These tips form a guide to evaluate quality criteria, to help you find your perfect Djembé or to improve your instrument.

The body of the Djembé is carved out of one single tree trunk. Each region in West Africa uses different types of timber for the manufacture. The tools are simple but practical pickaxes, carving irons and big wooden rasps. A talented carver will cut out a corpus within 4 to 6 hours. Drum carvers in Guinea and the tropical regions use the following types of timber: Silk Cotton, Khari, Wulinyi, Iroko, Ngoni and quite frequently the much sought-after Longai (Lengé), which means tropical wood. Sometimes, also cheap types of softwood are used as they are easy to process, for example palm wood (similar to Balsa), mostly coming from Ghana. In Senegal and Gambia (in the dry savannah), Duto (wild Mango tree, lat. Cordilla Pinnata) is processed, this is an extremely hard wood, which is unfortunately very brittle, thus bearing the risk of cracking. Quite often, these Djembés are equipped with very sharp rim under the skin, which can easily ruin the well-looked after hands of the Djembé player. Hence it is important to look out for a well-rounded rim! 

In industrial countries, you will also find corpuses made of glass fibre and grain (Hempstone) as well as wooden instruments glued according to barrel style or corpuses turned out of tree trunks or glued timber. I do not recommend these instruments – they never provide the brilliant sound of the African Djembé, in addition, they are usually offered much too expensive.

The proportions between kettle and funnel may vary slightly, however, they should be the same in length. Drums with a smaller kettle often have a more “crisp” sound, those with bigger kettle provide a stronger bass sound.

In Africa, the Djembé has different sub-names depending on its shape.  If the funnel has a curved form it is called “Bara” ( often manufactured in Burkina Faso); if the funnel is more straight, it is called “Soulé”.  The diameter of the narrowing between kettle and funnel is to a great extent responsible for the volume of the bass tone. I would not recommend small narrowings (one fist minimum!) since they do not allow high-quality timbres and make the Djembé sound dull and faint.