Abstract:
Sri Lanka is an island with prevalently drumming traditions. Each region has its own classified drums, drumming repertoires, and performance practices kept alive over many centuries. Although, there were significant changes in the social structure of these regions, drumming performances always played a major role in the cultural life of the people. It is, therefore, not surprising that in drumming ensembles prevail specific hierarchies among the drummers, as well as between regional drumming traditions and that these hierarchies reflect traditional social structures.
This paper is to show these different hierarchies, to set them into the context of social and cultural changes, to define and explain widespread common views about drumming practices, and to let drummers articulate themselves through their performances. Personal observation and fieldwork over a longer period of time allow for some first results. One of the results is the remarkable conclusion that these hierarchies may contribute to the sustainability of drumming traditions. At the same time, these hierarchies also reveal the contradictions of sustaining traditions and recent drum performances. Another result is the clear evidence that drumming traditions with their inherent hierarchies may connect to issues of religious belief systems, ritual practice, royal celebration standards, and practiced shamanism that s till resonates in these performances. The paper will provide a number of actual examples of the Kandyan, the Low Country, and the Sabaragamuwa drumming traditions, which can be further differentiated. Some works of the scholars, who had an outsider view on these cultures, are reviewed and presented in this research.
