Dong son drum: China musical instrument

Dong son drums are bronze drum invented by the Dong Son culture, in the Red River Delta of the northern Vietnam. The musical drums were manufactured from about 600 BC or earlier until the 3^rd century AD. The musical instruments are one of the culture’s finest examples of their metal working.

source: deringhall.com

The drums that are cast in the bronze with the use of lost wax method are up to a meter in height and the instruments weigh up to 100 kg. Dong son drums were apparently both musical instruments and cult objects. The musical instruments are decorated with the geometric patterns, scenes of daily life and war, animals and birds and boats. The latter alludes to the importance of trade to the culture that they were produced; the drums themselves have become objects of trade and heirlooms. More than 200 of the instruments have been found across the area from the eastern Indonesia to Vietnam and some parts of the southern china. The earliest version of the drum found in the year 1976 existed 2700 years ago in Wangjiaba in Yunnam Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture China. The musical drum is categorized into the heavier and the bigger Yue drums including the Dong son drums and the Dian drum, into 8 different subtypes and purported to be fabricated by Ma Yuan and Zhuge Liang. But the Book of the later Han sia Ma melt the bronze drums seized from the rebel Lac viet in Jiaozhi into horse.

The discovery of this musical instrument in the New Guinea is seen as evidence of trade connections – spanning at least the past thousand years – between this region and the technologically modernized- societies of the java and china.

The Heger 1 drums of the Dong son culture were categorized and divided into five groups by the scholar from Vietnam known as Huy Thong in the year 1990, a division that meant chronological succession.