Bodhrán History & Evolution
I’m even more pleased that I get to give a lecture on the topic I am most passionate about – The Bodhrán. I’ve been giving lectures on the bodhrán for years and it never gets old, I love it and even more I love sharing all I know about bodhráns with other music enthusiasts.
At the beginning of every lecture I try and keep it light and engage with all the students. To get the students attention I’ve come up with a fun approach, I start by saying “The facts you are about to hear are all lies” it grabs the students attention immediately and I have 150 faces looking at me blankly!
My statement is of course not true, however I’ve spent many years researching the bodhrán and honestly I’ve learnt that there is actually no definitive history of the bodhrán. We can only rely on word of mouth (more like Chinese whispers) handed down through the years by the many generations. The information and stories we hear are all narrated to us by our parents and grandparents. So to sum it up, the history of the bodhrán is only hear say, we have no concentrate information.
If you research the bodhrán’s history online, you will come across several quite varied opinion’s of the drums roots. Many claim it is an ancient druidic drum. Below are some of the theories which exist.
- A trade route for the bodhrán, could be traced back to over several millenniums ago. The trade route may have been in Persia, this is supposedly where the drum frame originated from. The reason people believe the drum originated from Persia is due to its use of winnowing, i.e separating seeds, and this would provide the most likely source as it provided the basic drum for most of the other frame drumming cultures.
- More recently, it is believed that it may have come from North Africa, it is still very popular in this region and is played by hand.
- As Ireland traded with Mediterranean countries this makes it a likely theory. This theory is based on the dyeing of wool. It is believed that the rim could have been made of bent willow with the skin stretched and tied over the circular willow, then punctured to allow the dye to pass through. The popular colours for dyeing would have been purple (from the flower of the heather), green (from vegetables) and orange (from carrots). Purple and green are known as the Celtic colours.
- Interestingly, the bodhrán was also used in battle as a war drum, this was to rise the temper of the fighting men against the enemy. The bodhrán was first mentioned in folklore, this comes from our grandparents and they probably heard it from their grandparents and this was with regards too the Wren. The Wren is said to have been a pagan ritual, so we presume the bodhrán was used around the 18th Century, however it may have been introduced centuries before that, there’s no evidence of how far it goes back.
John B Keane wrote a book called the “The Bodhrán Makers”, this is a good novel, however not a history book. After years of research it’s remarkable that there’s still no written history in existence and at this stage most likely there never will be.
We know that the bodhrán has been in existence for many years, its now as popular as ever, but what made it so popular those many years ago?
After doing much research, I found the basis of what made the bodhrán so popular and ironically it was used as a beat played to the music on the day of the Wren, also known as Saint Stephen’s Day, which takes place December 26th. So what was the Wren? It was when a group of men dressed up in straw hats and skirts, they blackened their faces with soot and entertained their local population by going from house to house playing traditional music and dancing in payment for food, money or drink and of course the craic which came with it! They were known as wrenboys, mummers or strawboys. This pagan tradition dates back to a millennium, this means if the bodhrán was used it goes as far back as then.
Legend has it that St Stephen was betrayed by a chattering wren while hiding from his enemies. The wren like St Stephen would be hunted down and stoned to death.
Another legend holds that during the Viking raids of the sixth century, Irish soldiers were betrayed by a wren as they were sneaking up on a Viking camp in the dead of night. The wren began eating crumbs left on a bodhrán drum head and the rat-a-tat-tat of his beak on the drumhead woke the drummer who sounded the alarm. The Irish were subsequently defeated and the wren blamed.
So if the wren was celebrated as early as the first millennia it is possible that the bodhrán was also around at that time.
The wren the wren the king of all birds,
On Stephens Day was caught in the furze,
Although he is little his family is great,
I pray you lady you give us a treat.
My box would speak if it had only a tongue,
And two or three shillings would do it no wrong,
Sing holly sing ivy-sing ivy sing holly,
A drop just to drink would drown melancholy.
And if you draw it of the best,
I hope in heaven your soul will rest,
But if you draw it of the small,
It won’t agree with these wrenboys at all.
The bodhrán was first recorded in the 1920’s, it was recorded on a 78 record. It became popular in the fifties and sixties with the renewal in popularity of traditional Irish music and this gave life to the bodhrán makers of the sixties, such as Sonny Davey from Sligo, Charlie Byrne from Tipperary, Paddy Clancy from Limerick and many more.
Bodhrán-making became a cottage industry. In 1978, I joined the fraternity known as The Bodhrán Makers. An bodhrán was promoted by Seán O’Riada in his arrangements for Ceoltoiri Cualann, who later became the Chieftains, and was preferred by Sean to the snare drum used in the ceili bands.
The word bodhrán could also mean deafner, possibly as the wren boys used it to make a lot of noise. According to John B the wren boys sometimes added flattened pennies to the sides to make a jingle and hence the name tambourine. It was also called the bourine.
The bodhrán is regarded by most with derision, or at best suspicion and this is what bodhrán players are up against.
There are reasons for this attitude. The bodhrán seems easy to play; to the non-musician who wants to be thought of as a musician, the bodhrán seems an easily acquired passport into a select company. Or it may be that he perceives the music as an entertainment which everyone may, or should, join in. Whatever the motivation, the results are sometimes dreadful; a piano accordion, for example, accompanied by a battering of four or five aspiring bodhrán players, all producing personal variations on what they think is the beat is hardly likely to be music.
On the other hand the bodhrán can give a good lift to a session or to solo playing. The combination of the flute and bodhrán is a well tried one and many flute players like a good bodhrán accompaniment.
The bodhrán frame is made from a variety of different timbers, the most popular being plywood. The use of crossbars gives that added strength to the frame. Goatskin is mainly used, but I have heard of people using a variety of animal skins. Goats are not killed for their skins. The skin is a by product. The skins that are used today come from a variety of countries mainly Ireland, North Africa, India and Pakistan.
To finish off, a researcher friend of mine was researching the word bodhrán and believes that it comes from the Irish word borranaigh, which means anger or aggravate. Relate this to winnowing i.e. the separating of the wheat from the chaff. As the wheat bounced against the skin, the wheat is agitated and the chaff separates. So the agricultural tool used to perform this operation could well be called a bodhrán.
So there you have it. I’ve searched library’s and the web, but from what I can gather it is all speculation. This, in my professional opinion, is the most likely history of the Bodhrán.