congaplace.com

I would like to show some pics of my latest buy, a so-called darajon,
consisting of a Yambu Peruano-shaped beech corpus with a three-ply 8" cherrywood playing surface.
This instrument has been manufactured in Germany by "Klanginitiative":
http://www.klanginitiative.com/english/set_e.html

Here are some details about the instrument:
It is actually a blend of darabuka and a djembe.

Check out the different sounds:
played like a djembe (hole closed with leg): http://www.klanginitiative.com/sounds/K ... Djembe.mp3

or the darabuka-like sound (bass tones with open hole) : http://www.klanginitiative.com/sounds/K ... rabuka.mp3

or something like a wood bongo http://www.klanginitiative.com/sounds/K ... _Bongo.mp3

The darajon has been developed for both educational (cf. size: about 16" tall) and professional purposes.
I must say it is great fun to play on it. You can alter the tone by covering the hole, a bit like with clay drums
(Udu). Disrespectfully, it looks a bit like a bird house with the hole
The great plus is its lightness but the projection is still fine.

Here is the darajon combined with my selfmade wooden bongos: The wooden drums match quite well tonally.

On the whole, I would highly recommend this instrument. It is also relatively inexpensive (but no toy instrument!) and the wood construction is flawless. You can see it has been made by hand by professional craftsmen.

That is all for now.
I wish everybody a nice weekend!

Edit:
The manufacturer has also developed other kinds of innovative and purely wooden drums, such as the cube kit , which a drum set consisting of wooden boxes.

Is the bottom open Mike, or is that tiny hole the only port?

thomas newton wrote:Is the bottom open Mike, or is that tiny hole the only port?

Nope, Thomas, bottom is open of course. Birds would fall down

BTW there appear to be mountable darajon versions without a round hole.

Regards
-Mike

Looks like a "conga cajon".... but you say the playing surface is on the side with the hole and not on the small light-colored panel?

Whopbamboom wrote:Looks like a "conga cajon".... but you say the playing surface is on the side with the hole and not on the small light-colored panel?

WBB,
no, the playing surface is on the square panel as you might guess. Sorry if I was not clear at that point.

The hole is good for tone modulations and the overall sound is more middle-eastern than a conga cajon.

Yeah, otherwise it looks like a conga cajon indeed - a bonsai version of it

Easy to carry around.