Pro Africa-Style Carved Djembes: Each a Pinnacle Piece
Toca
Percussion has a solid background fashioning djembes in the indigenous Africa
tradition—one that will sustain the rigors of climates and usages in locations
thousands of miles apart. Also, Toca Pro Africa Style Carved Djembes take
their shape from one piece—a single resonant block—of environmentally friendly
plantation grown mahogany. Mahogany is a historically valued tone wood,
while the one-piece construction is a rarely invoked means of ensuring unimpeded
resonance.
Lathe turned for uniform thickness, the Toca Pro Africa Djembe
is sealed and protected from climate/humidity shifts by means of
hand-applications of twenty coats of teak oil to each kiln-dried
single-piece shell. The sealing coats protect outer folkloric graphics
and inner roughened-carved carvings, the latter serving to diffuse
and reduce aberrant overtones that might disturb the essential
warm highs and robust lows inherent in such a masterful instrument.
The head is chosen from a special selection of fine goatskin,
the optimum djembe head in terms of response, dynamic sensitivity
and frequency range. Heads are tuned via a web of low-stretch specially
configured Alpine rope runners, now increased in number, with braided
cores for extra strength. Extra top sealers and tuning-base rings
provide stable, well-anchored tuning free of slippage problems.
Available in 10", 12" and 13" sizes, the Toca Pro Africa-Style
Carved Djembe is as much a premium instrument as it is a collectible
piece of folk art. Either way, no mass production methods, compromises
in hand labor, or diminution of materials has been entertained,
such that the Toca Carved Djembe stands proud as the pinnacle of
the art.
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