Today I’ve built my first instrument: a Pandero Cuadráu (post capitalism edition).

The Pandero Cuadráu it’s a traditional tambourine of North African origin, traditionally played by women in several regions of the Iberian Peninsula.

Its name comes from the spanish word for the arabic bendir - بندير‎ (pandero) and squared (cuadrado). In the village of Peñaparda its played with a stick, while in other parts of the peninsula with the hands. It is also known as Pandera (from bendir too) or Adufe (also from andalusian origin al duff/daff - الدُّف ).

This square frame drum is usually made of pine, over which is mounted a goat’s skin stitched on the sides and sometimes in the interior seeds, chickpeas, small stones, or strings are placed to make pleasing sounds.

This edition is a DIY recycled and vegan version of it. It’s based on a model by Vicente Botella, but slightly different.

The building process is straight forward: just cut 4 pieces of wood of aprox 45cm x 5cm x 1.5cm and join them with 2 screws on each junction. Once the frame is fixed and stable, you can sand the wood to make it cleaner (which I haven’t done this time). Finally, roll tape covering the entire drum, with a certain tension (which will determine the timbre) on one side, and then make another turn perpendicular to the first. Between the two layers, you can decorate with a sticker.

In my case, I have decorated it with Anda Jaleo (a traditional song recorded by Lorca in 1931 but not related to the square drum).

It’s my first time ever working with wood and the result its ugly but somehow it sounds really nice, and I actually like the industrial look of it.

My idea is to build now an appendix to it that will generate electronic sounds while playing it accoustically, similarly to what Cinna Peyghamy does.