Dhol

Dhol is a very pop­ular folk drum of nor­thern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is a barrel shaped, some­times cylindrical drum, with skins on both sides. It has one side which has a high pitch and an­other side which has a lower pitch. It is very pop­ular in folk music. The dhol is essen­tially nothing more than a larger version of the dholak.

The term "dhol" has a generic quality about it. Virtually any large barrel shaped or cylindrical drum may be called a dhol. There­fore, whenever one wishes to be more specific one gen­erally attaches a descriptive term to make things clear (e.g., "bhangra dhol").

The his­tory of the dhol is not clear. One source of con­fusion may be that the origin of the term "dhol" may be dif­fer­ent from the origin of the instrument it­self. The word "dhol" is prob­ably of Persian origin. It is prob­ably der­ived from the Persian "dohol" or "duhul". How­ever images of dhol players appear to be pres­ent in the bas relief carvings on In­dian temple walls from the ear­liest times. It is pos­sible that both the instrument as well as the name have some deep Indo-European con­nec­tion. How­ever, at this point it is just really dif­fi­cult to make any firm statement as to the origin of the instrument.