Surdo

The surdo was invented by Alcebíades Barcelos - (Bide) in Estacio de Sa in Rio de Janeiro and was first used in Rio carnival in 1928, in the parade of the first ever samba school, Deixa Falar. This first surdo was made from a 20kg wooden butter barrel with the top and bottom removed and replaced by hide skins.

Before the surdo was used in samba there wasn't a big, loud bass samba drum loud enough to hold the beat and be heard by everyone. The main percussion instrumets in samba were agogo, ganza, chocalho, reco - reco, cavaquinho and cuica. There were no samba drums built to hold a strong simple beat.

With its simple, strong rhythm the surdo drum was an immediate sucess. It allowed everyone to keep in time to the music and so gave harmony and unity to the carnival parade. By the following year all the other samba schools had copied it and were using it in carnival. Ismael Silva, founder of Deixa Falar, said that the surdo drum turned the rhythm of samba from ""tan tantan tan tantan", to "bum bum paticumbumprugurundum".