Spectral analyses of the Ikoro drum

The Ikoro or Ekwe-is a wooden slit drum, a percussion instrument of the idiophone family which by virtue of its functions and its predominance in the eastern parts of Nigeria with the Igbo’s plays an important role in the Igbo musical culture and settings. The Ekwe being a drum made of wood has pitches and produces a very deep rich bass sound which can be heard from a distance and has a sustained reverberation rendering a background beat to music or sound of warning. This paper looks at the frequency domain of the sustained reverberation, measuring, and analyzing the dynamics responses of the structure upon an excitation and describes the historical and constructional process of the Ekwe.