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| ARTIKEL / ARTICLES |
SANTERÍA + BATÁ Die Batá in der Ocha-Liturgie 
Die Batá-Trommeln
Zutaten für eine Fardela
My Fardela Recipe 
The Giraldo Rodriguez Record
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| LATIN MUSIC + PERCUSSION
Was ist Percussion?
Die Bongos
The Bongos
Die Congas
The Congas
Die Timbales
The Timbales
Die Chekere
The Shekere
Self-Built Cajones for Yambú
Afro-Cuban Jazz
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| JAZZ + DRUMS
Evolution des Schlagzeugs
Schlagzeuger-Lebensdaten
Jazz, Drums & Tap Dance
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My Fardela Recipeby Thomas Altmann, 2002 |
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I have my fardela on the batá drums for about seven years or more without having to renew. It is pretty flat, not higher than 3 mm and circular. It gives the iyá a sustain you'll have to be able to control. I also put a small ring of it on the itótele. Either drum has more body in it's tone now. I got the idea from John Santos first, to use chewing gum plus beeswax (again one of those recipes!). I had also learned that in India they mix the dough they use with FeO (black iron oxide) to give more gravity to the substance. So I went to the drugstore and got me some iron powder. O.K.: It's Ogún's material, but I am considering the fact also, that Changó's drum is being constructed with Ogún's tools, like Felipe García Villamil pointed out in "Drumming for the Gods", and after all the batá play for Ogún, too (in Cuba)! For the same reason I decided to add a selection of ground dried leaves belonging to each of the Orishas. Then some flour went into the mixture (in India I was told they take rice flour; I used wheat flour first, later switched to maize starch). After a few failures I found out that a small block of hard white palm grease (normally used for frying) has to be part of the fardela. If necessary, a few drops of vegetable oil would make it softer and therefore more flexible. The chewing gum is cooked in boiling water to extract the sugar and the flavour from it. (Open the kitchen window: A biting smell of peppermint will fill the room.) After that you melt the gum together with the beeswax and the palm grease in a can. It will mingle well. You add the powder and the flour. Don't take too much of the latter: The fardela could crackle like a cookie! Which brings us to the quantities: I cannot recall the exact relations, because I really experimented a lot by constantly scraping it off the skin and adding more of this and that, if the fardela did not pass the test: If the share of wax is too high, the fardela will not stick to the drum and break in solid pieces that fall off the skin; this is more likely to happen as soon as you change the tension of the skin when you want to tune them. If the share of chewing gum is too high, it will adhere perfectly to the drum -and your hands! It is something you can guess when you touch it and press your fingers into it (when cold). So you pour the hot mixture in a circle onto the boca of the upright standing drum. If something lands where it's not supposed to remain, remove it immediately (later you would have to scrape). While the fardela is cooling out, sprinkle flour or (better:) maize starch over skin and fardela, spread it with your hands over the fardela and mold it into the desired shape. The flour prevents the paste from sticking to your hands. When the fardela is almost cold, you repeat the procedure with the purpose to press the fardela tightly on the skin, to anchor it in the pores of the hide. When the fardela has completely cooled out, you apply the flour or starch a third time, you cover the fardela with it and press it well into its surface before you play the drum. You will do this everytime in the future, when you find the fardela too sticky (at moderate temperatures), provided that the whole mixture is basically well balanced. When you play the drum, you might decide to take away something or add more fardela, to cover more of the skin surface or to mount it up and form something like a crater. You may form a broad or narrow circle. I personally never experimented with filling up the ring in the center. Actually, I used the fotos in Ortíz' book as a model; only that I designed the fardela of the itótele much smaller, more narrow to the center of the head. Should you decide to use this recipe and you manage to have it stay in its place for, let's say, a year: Try to note down the respective quantities you have successfully used, so that others can avoid the guesswork in the future. See also the photo of the top view of my batá. |
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