Overview

The dholak (Punjabi: ਢੋਲਕ, Bengali: ঢোলক, Hindi: ढोलक; Dutch: dhool in the Netherlands and Suriname) is a South Asian two-headed hand-drum. It may have traditional cotton rope lacing, screw-turnbuckle tensioning or both combined: in the first case steel rings are used for tuning or pegs a twisted inside the laces. The dholak is mainly a folk instrument, lacking the exact tuning and playing techniques of the tabla or the pakhawaj. The drum is pitched, depending on size, with an interval of perhaps a perfect fourth or perfect fifth between the two heads. It is related to the larger Punjabi dhol and the smaller dholki. The smaller face of dholak is made up of she goat skin for sharp note and bigger face is made up of skin of he goat,buffalofor low pitch which makes dholak a great variation of bass and treble with rythmic high and low pitch . Dholak is a very pop¬ular folk drum of nor¬thern India. It is barrel shaped with a simple membrane on the right hand side; ba¬si¬cally it is just a smaller version of the dhol. The left hand is also a sin¬gle membrane with a special application on the inner surface. This application is a mix¬ture of tar, clay and sand (dholak masala) which lowers the pitch and provides a well de¬fined tone. There are two ways of tigh¬ten¬ing the dholak. Sometimes they are laced with rope, in which case, a series of metal rings are pulled to tighten the instrument. Sometimes metal turnbuckles are employed. It is said that this instrument used to occupy a posi¬tion of con¬si¬der¬able prestige. Today it is merely re¬le¬ga¬ted to filmi and folk music.

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