What it means
تنبک (tonbak), also called ضرب (zarb), is the Persian goblet drum, the centerpiece of rhythm in every classical ensemble. It has a wooden body shaped like a wine goblet (the wide head, the narrowing waist, the smaller foot), a single drumhead of stretched goat or camel skin, and no laces or tuning hardware on the head itself. You play it on your lap with both hands, fingertips against the skin, palms against the rim, and you can pull a remarkable range of timbres out of a single drum.
Spelled either تنبک or ضرب; the second name means simply “beat,” which is what the drum delivers.
How to use it
tonbak qalb-e ritm-e musiqi-ye sonnati-ye iran ast.
The tonbak is the heart of rhythm in Iranian traditional music.
تنبک قلب ریتم موسیقی سنتی ایران است.
hossein tehrani ostad-e bozorg-e tonbak-e modern bud.
Hossein Tehrani was the great master of the modern tonbak.
حسین تهرانی استاد بزرگ تنبک مدرن بود.
Hossein Tehrani and the modern technique
Until the mid twentieth century the tonbak was treated as an accompaniment instrument, secondary to the melody. Hossein Tehrani (1912 to 1974) changed that. Through his teaching at the Tehran Conservatory in the 1960s, his published method book, and his solo recordings, he established the tonbak as an instrument worthy of solo performance and codified a technique with named strokes (tom, bak, riz, pelang). Every serious tonbak player since plays in the school he built.
Where it comes from
The word تنبک is of Persian origin and shows up in classical sources back to the medieval period. The instrument family of single-headed goblet drums spans the Iranian world and the Arab world (the darbuka in Arabic countries is a close cousin, though typically metal or ceramic rather than wood, and played differently). The wooden Persian variant with its specific stroke vocabulary is the version that defined the classical ensemble.
Where to find one
Tehran’s Lalehzar Street has the shops; Isfahan and Shiraz workshops also turn out fine pieces. A good handmade tonbak from a known workshop in walnut or mulberry runs two hundred to six hundred dollars; a student model is forty to a hundred. The skin matters more than the wood; camel skin is the high end, goat skin the standard.
In our voice
Get one. Out of every Persian instrument, the tonbak is the easiest to start making real music on, because rhythm is felt before it is learned. You can get a recognizable groove out of it on day one, which is not true of the setar.
References
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