New age tassa now made from synthetic plastic

SLAP bang in the middle of the holiday season and amid the heady sounds of parang and Christmas carols, Newsday has uncovered a little-known innovation to one of the country’s more recognisable indigenous Indian musical instruments — the tassa drum. This instrument whose main feature is its goatskin face which has to be heated constantly to derive the uniquely Trinbagonian melody, has undergone a metamorphosis of sorts, with synthetic plastic being used in place of the traditional goatskin. Called the fibre tassa, the new synthetic skin tassa looks like and sounds like the original goatskin tassa, with one difference — no goat has to sacrifice its hide. While introduced from as early as 1998 by the Malick Folk Performers, the fibre tassa which is made out of an oval clay foundation, with the synthetic plastic covering on the face, is now slowly catching the eyes of tassa sides around the country.

What is appealing to tassa players is the reduction in the preparation of the tassa. Leader of Caribel Fun Lovers Tassa Group, Devanand Mandeo, explained that with the fibre tassa, there is no need to heat the tassa in order to get the correct pitch for tassa rhythms such as the bass, “jaal,” folay and cutter. Heating is absolutely vital with the traditional goatskin tassa, if the right melody is to be derived. “When it was introduced in 1998, everyone laughed. But as time passed and players saw other groups using them the fibre-tassa started getting popular,” Mandeo explained. What was the reason for the fibre tassa’s newfound popularity? “It is very handy when one considers the length of time that it takes to heat a traditional goat skin tassa (sometimes up to 30 minutes) before one can get the right melody. Now we have no trouble with the fibre-tassa since there is no need to heat it,” he explained.

The synthetic plastic, called “trap skin” which is the plastic covering made for normal plastic oil or water drums, is stretched to various degrees using rope, in order to get certain melodies consistent with a goat skin tassa. Indeed the tassa has come a long way. However, while the fibre skin tassa has eliminated the need for heating there is one big disadvantage. “The trap skins are not very durable and cannot be roughed up. They are also very costly and sometimes you may have to spend upwards of $100 for one skin, and not all skin is the same...they will have different musical pitches in them and it may be costly to source the right skin,” Mandeo said. “However the fibre skin tassa still needs to be fine-tuned and we are working around the clock to fix these problems and ensure that this new type of tassa could be accessible to everyone.” So the next time you attend a function where tassa is being played, you might want to scrutinise the tassa more closely, since what may sound like a goatskin tassa, could very well be the synthetic fibre tassa.