Rattle Instrument
The next instrument used in traditional Ewe drumming is called axatse (pronounced ah-hah-chay). The axatse is a rattle-like instrument which is basically a hollowed-out gourd covered with a net of seeds or beads. The axatse is usually played sitting down. It is held at the handle and in the players strong hand and is shaken up hitting the hand and down hitting the thigh making two different sounds. The axatse usually plays the same thing that the bell plays but with some extra added notes in between the beats. It can be described as the eighth note version of what the gankogui plays. It has also been described as enriching or reinforcing what the gankogui plays. Overall it gives energy to the music and drives the music. The axatse produces a dry ratting but energetic sound.
Read more about this topic: Ewe Drumming
Famous quotes containing the words rattle and/or instrument:
“There’s keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)