This paper addresses historic perspectives on the changing status of the parai frame drum in Tamil Nadu and the artists who have played it for two millennium. I examine Hindu temple iconography from the aesthetic contexts of Tamil empires between the 7^th and 17^th centuries to consider the drum’s relationship to elite Hindu culture as well as how the concept of untouchability developed. I do so using three types of images: Bhuda Ganangal protector attendants in Siva or Murugan temples who are depicted playing instruments in ritually significant locations; South Indian style drummers who accompany dancers playing larger frame drums with their hands (Seastrand 2022, 2024; and Nayaka Islamisized/Persio-Arabic influenced figures that play medium to smaller drums (Verghese 1995, Wagoner 1996). I frame the interpretation of this history from the contemporary struggle to articulate an “unspoken” music history that complicates the parai’s history of degradation while considering its historical changes through culture contact with Western and Islamic sources (Sykes and Byl 2023). I argue this perspective provides Dalit artists a claim to cultural capital beyond a Dravidian/Tamil nationalism currently perpetuated by middle castes in the Tamil diasporas as they appropriate the drum as a symbol of “ancient Tamil culture,” while erasing hundreds of years of untouchability experienced by hereditary artists.

From North American Indigenous nations' spiritual traditions to the Sufi dhikr ceremonies of the Middle East and North Africa, frame drums have served as vehicles for cultural and spiritual expression, storytelling, and transcendence. In North America since the 1970s, frame drums have been popular in women-only contemporary spiritual circles. These circles, predominantly made up of white women facilitators and participants, provide a captivating site for analysis, where drum circle facilitators' and participants' use of frame drums intersects with various aspects of identity, power, and spirituality. Although these circles are created to serve as transformative “sacred” spaces where women seek empowerment and connection through sisterhood, the utilization of “foreign,” “ethnic” and/or Indigenous frame drums in spaces organized and populated by mostly white women initiates a complex interaction between cultural appropriation of practices and drums, dynamics of race, gender, and sonic spiritualities.

This paper offers a comprehensive examination of the Ontario Womyn's Drum Camp, spanning its spiritual, communal, and economic dimensions. Through ethnographic fieldwork methods, it explores [1] how sacred drumming transcends its musical role to foster spiritual experiences and forge stronger bonds among participants and [2] the complex dynamics of race, power, and privilege within the camp, seeking to provide a nuanced understanding of how sacred drumming as a form of sonic spirituality can simultaneously foster empowerment for some and perpetuate exclusion for others within spiritual communities.

This paper explores the rich tradition of frame drumming in Tajik Badakhshan and the unique ways in which the Badakhshani daf serves to mediate both the ritual and social aspects of lifeway celebrations. As elsewhere across Central Eurasia, the daf figures centrally in traditional, joyful ceremonies that mark new beginnings or collective praise of God: yet it is also an instrument that supports social cohesion at times of conflict or loss. Building on studies of frame drumming across Central Eurasia by Poche (1984), During (1991), and Doubleday (1999), this paper offers a native scholar’s perspective on frame drumming in Badakhshan, which has until now received no sustained treatment in any language. Drawing on personal experiences as well as ethnographic research among local musicians and cultural experts, this paper presents an overview of the daf’s many uses in Badakhshani cultural life. It offers an analysis of an exceptional case study in the author’s own village in the Tajik Wakhan Valley, where the daf enabled a wedding celebration to go forward despite a recent death in the community. Although periods of mourning in Badakhshan usually require a temporary cessation of all music-making and celebratory events, in this case, the mourners signaled their consent to a wedding by striking the daf. Such a case suggests that the daf’s significance far exceeds its utility as a technology of ritual musical accompaniment and is open to continued renewal and (re)interpretation, depending on the needs of the moment.