Alfaia

The alfaia is a Brazilian

membranophone A membranophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a vibrating stretched membrane. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification. ...

. It is a wooden

drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...

made of animal skin tensioned or loosened through ropes placed alongside the body of the instrument. Alfaias are usually between and in

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...

. Their construction is similar to 19th-century American and European

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

field drums Field may refer to: Expanses of open ground * Field (agriculture), an area of land used for agricultural purposes * Airfield, an aerodrome that lacks the infrastructure of an airport * Battlefield * Lawn, an area of mowed grass * Meadow, a grass ...

, and

Latin American Latin Americans ( es, Latinoamericanos; pt, Latino-americanos; ) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-eth ...

wooden bass drums. Their

drumheads A drumhead or drum skin is a membrane stretched over one or both of the open ends of a drum. The drumhead is struck with sticks, mallets, or hands, so that it vibrates and the sound resonates through the drum. Additionally outside of percus ...

are clamped to the body through large wooden hoops, and they are played with distinctly-shaped thick wooden

drum stick A drum stick (or drumstick) is a type of percussion mallet used particularly for playing snare drum, drum kit, and some other percussion instruments, and particularly for playing unpitched percussion. Specialized beaters used on some other pe ...

s. Sometimes the stick used in the

dominant hand In human biology, handedness is an individual's preferential use of one hand, known as the dominant hand, due to it being stronger, faster or more dextrous. The other hand, comparatively often the weaker, less dextrous or simply less subjecti ...

is marginally larger than the one used in the weak hand. Traditionally strapped over the shoulder, alfaias are played with a distinctive

technique Technique or techniques may refer to: Music * The Techniques, a Jamaican rocksteady vocal group of the 1960s *Technique (band), a British female synth pop band in the 1990s * ''Technique'' (album), by New Order, 1989 * ''Techniques'' (album), by M ...

in which players hold the weak-hand drum stick inverted to get the proper attack on the head. Alfaias are also known as "Rope-surdos" or "Maracatu-drums", and the largest ones are called "Alfaias-marcantes". The medium-sized drums are called "Alfaia-meião". The alfaia has a characteristic deep, heavy sound, different from other bass drums such as the

surdo The surdo is a large bass drum used in many kinds of Brazilian music, such as Axé/Samba-reggae and samba, where it plays the lower parts from a percussion section. It is also notable for its association with the cucumbi genre of the Ancient Near ...

or kick-drum, and they are used mainly in the

Northeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

folk rhythms and dances of Brazil, such as

maracatu The term maracatu denotes any of several performance genres found in Pernambuco, Northeastern Brazil. Main types of maracatu include ''maracatu nação'' (nation-style maracatu) and ''maracatu rural'' (rural-style maracatu). Maracatu Nação Marac ...

, ciranda and coco-de-roda. {{Authority control Drums Brazilian percussion South American percussion instruments Alphabetical musical instruments