DRUMS are instruments that produce sound through the striking, rubbing, or plucking of stretched membranes. The religious use of drums is historically and geographically extensive, but by no means universal. They are conspicuously lacking in many Christian and Islamic liturgical traditions, as well as in various African religions. Their absence from the oldest forms of religious music of such well-known hunter-gatherers as the African Pygmies and San (Bushmen), the Australian Aborigines, the Väddas of Sri Lanka, and others suggests that drums are not particularly archaic or "primitive" but rather are associated with the later cultural systems of sedentary agriculture and urban civilization. They are important in both local traditions and in the "great" intercultural, literate religious traditions.

Drums have relatively low value in Middle Eastern and European religious traditions, somewhat more in East Asia, Oceania, and Native America, and high value and variety of uses in South...