The alfaia is a Brazilian

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

. 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 ...

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 centre of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest Chord (geometry), chord of the circle. Both definitions a ...

. 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. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

or field drums, and

Latin American Latin Americans (; ) are the citizenship, citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their Latin American diaspora, diasporas are Metroethnicity, ...

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 and causing it to be stronger, faster or more dextrous. The other hand, comparatively often the weaker, less dextrous or simply le ...

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 ...

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 bass drum or a large floor tom-like 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. The instrument was created by Alcebíades Barcelos duri ...

or kick-drum, and they are used mainly in the Northeastern folk rhythms and dances of Brazil, such as maracatu, ciranda and coco-de-roda.

References

{{Authority control Drums Brazilian percussion