Clay Mrdangas...

Phani commented:

it's great how you utilize locally available material and skills to produce mrdangas, or something that comes close to the original thing. but isn't clay locally available in most places, too? (eskimos might experiment with ice-mrdangas...) i never watched mrdangas being made here in mayapur, but don't think there's a huge learning curve getting the clay molded, dried, and burnt into mrdanga shape.

for the heads you could still use fiber, plastic, or whatever; not screwed on, but tied up like the indian mrdangas are. at least until cow protection becomes more wiedespread in the west, and ahimsa leather of cows who passed on peacefully.

metal and wood work has been known in india for a long time, and there are drums made of these materials, too. but as far as i know, for kirtan / bhajan, always clay drums have been used. i haven't heard many varieties of modern mrdangas and am no musical expert anyway, but as far as i can tell, there's quite a difference between the original thing and the other materials...

This echoes the conversation I had last night with Craig at the temple. He also suggested using clay, and mentioned one potter that he knows.

Here are the reasons why we are not considering clay at this point in time:

• Clay is fragile and the drums made from it are not durable
• The mounting of heads is more complicated due to the need to tie them on, rather than mount them with simple screws
• Mass production is not as easy as using other materials that are more readily available and worked with commonly available industrial production lines

To build the infrastructure to make fibreglass / kevlar / aluminium drums is undoubtedly more difficult and expensive than to build the infrastructure needed to make clay ones. However, this infrastructure is already in place in modern cities, whereas the infrastructure and skillset to make clay mrdangas is not.

This has been my initial consideration.

In Srila Prabhupada's time devotees went to Navadvipa and spent many months trying to learn the traditional methods of mrdanga production, but were unable.

At the same time we see that Balarama mrdanga production, using western technologies is going on.

I'll post another article with some more of my thoughts on mrdanga production in the modern western world.