The ashiko is a drum, shaped like a tapered cylinder or truncated cone with the head on the wide end, and the narrow end open. It is made of hardwood and generally has a calfskin hide. Nowadays, goatskin is sometimes used, in imitation of the high sound of the popular djembe drum. It is played with the hands, and tuned by ropes. Ashiko drums – or variants thereof – are traditionally found in West Africa, as well as part of the Americas.
History
The origins of the ashiko drum are traced to the Yoruba culture in (mainly) present-day Nigeria and Benin, West Africa. The word “ashiko” is also traced to a word in the Yoruba language meaning either “drum” or (with tonal difference) "time-frame" or “freedom”. The drum has a long tradition in Yoruba culture, where the drum functioned in community celebrations, as well as a “talking drum”. Traditional ashikos were/are hand carved from a single log of wood and were not straight cones.
The African/Nigerian ashiko as such first got disseminated and popularized in some circles in the US in the 1930s, after Nigerian drummer Moses Mianns emigrated to New York in the 1930s. The drum he commissioned in the United States is in the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the NYPL. Examining it, one can see the original ashiko is not a simple cone drum but is, in fact, curved on the inside, creating a softer tone, and emulating carved drums.
The ashiko received exposure on a much wider scale in the US and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s with the popularity of the touring folkloric ensemble created by Yoruba musician Babatunde Olatunji, which included ashiko and other drums. His ensemble of Montego Joe, Chief James Hawthorne Bey, Baba Taiwo DuVall, and Julito Collazo, were all students of Miannes who played with Olatunji, and disseminated the technique. They can be heard on Olatunji's groundbreaking LP for Columbia, Drums of Passion. Famed djembefola Ladji Camara, who truly introduced the drum to U.S. students, worked with Olatunji. He can be heard on Olatunji's More Drums of Passion.
After Olajuni opened for the Grateful Dead in the 1980s, the ashiko spread from its Afro-based constituency, and became part of the European-American growing local drum movement in the US and elsewhere in the Western world.