A three-minute work “Wind, Rain, Thunder and Lightning” was performed at the National Concert Hall in May. At the last beat of the drum, the white-haired performer, holding a drum stick in each hand, brought his hands together and bowed to his 3-foot-wide, 71-year-old drum.
The poignant scene took the breath away of the more than 1,000 people in the audience. “At that moment when he stood up,” Ju Tzong-ching said, “everyone had tears running down their faces.”
Papa’s 71-year-old drum has kept its sound
The scene occurred at Ju Percussion Group’s annual concert this year. As the program concluded, the person standing on stage was not a member of a musical group but rather Wang Xi-kun, a drum maker who never formally studied musical performance.
This drum was one that his father Wang Guei-zhi made at their Xiang Ren Ho Bell and Drum Store 71 years ago. “My father has passed away,” the younger Wang said, “but his spirit remains.” Though time weathered, the drum has not been repaired. Not even its drum skin has been replaced. Yet it has maintained its sweet, rich sound.
With that last drum stroke, apart from showing off the sound of the instrument, Wang conveyed to the audience his father’s drum-making spirit.
“As master Wang got up to drum, I was moved to tears,” said Chin Kwok-wai, a renowned drummer from Hong Kong. Chin said this old drum was not actually the one Wang Guei-zhi left for his son. Rather, it was what Wang Xi-kun discovered when he was repairing another drum for a client. In exchange, he gave the client a larger drum.
Xiang Ren Ho has been in business for nearly 90 years, and its clients include 90 percent of Taiwan’s temples. Under Wang Xi-kun’s leadership, the store’s drums have been used by the Ju Percussion Group, U-Theater of Taiwan, and the Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Cultural Group. They have even been exported to 10 countries including India and the U.S. Xiang Ren Ho drums can also be found at Fo Guang Shan Monasteries around the world.
Despite never advertising, this traditional maker has been able to sell its drums abroad. It is a feat that bears witness to just how well Wang Xi-kun has carried on his father’s legacy for 40 years.
Making a visit to Xiang Ren Ho’s factory in Xinzhuang, a visitor sees six distinct stages in the drum manufacturing process: unhairing the skin, scudding the skin (scrapping off the epidermis and achieving even thickness), sunning the skin, sunning the shell, stretching the skin and finally walking on the drum to perfect how the skin fits to the shell. From start to finish, the process is done by hand. During summer, temperatures in the factory can exceed 35 C. Just standing in there motionless, one grows covered in sweat.
Doing as papa did, by hand, for years ahead
Currently, Taiwan has fewer than 20 traditional drum manufacturers, and less than a quarter of them do their work by hand. In an era when other drum-makers have long been unhairing with chemicals and employing electric tools and machinery in the scudding process, Wang Xi-kun has insisted on continuing by hand in the traditional way his father made drums back in the day.
Wang Kai-zheng, the third generation of the Wang family in the business, once suggested buying a pressure meter that manufacturers of Western drums use for testing. Much to his surprise, recalled family friend Chin, his father was adamantly opposed: “Testing by hand is good enough.”
As far as Wang Xi-kun is concerned, his father’s way still works today. He wants to keep Wang Guei-zhi’s spirit alive at every aspect of Xiang Ren Ho operations.
“A lot of the drums from other makers are fine when you take them home,” Chin said, “but they end up destined for the garbage bin after only a year or two of use.” Xiang Ren Ho drums, on the other hand, are confident enough to write on their skin heads: “Guaranteed for 10 years.” “I’m still using one of their drums made 29 years ago,” Ju said.
But behind the phrase guaranteed for 10 years is a constant quest on Wang’s part to imagine and better understand how his drums will sound in future years.
When Wang stood in a putrid space of 30-odd square meters scudding cowhide that one of his young craftsman had not quite finished preparing, he thought achieving an even thickness of the drum skin was not enough. Humidity, temperature, pressure and other factors have to be taken into account. Wang is constantly considering how these can affect what a drum will sound like 20 years down the road.
The average humidity in some U.S. areas is typically around 20 to 30 percent, whereas it is around 75 percent in India. Just accounting for humidity yields 100 different possibilities. If the temperature and other situational aspects of how and where the drum will be used are factored in, there are an infinite number of permutations and combinations. All manner of historical data and experience is contained within Wang Xi-kun’s head. When it comes to meeting customers’ needs, only he fully understands how thin and tight the drum skin should be. Only he knows all the tricks of adjustment.
“Clack!” Wang was kneeling on a drum that has a diameter of 1.5 meters, using a drumstick to tap the side of the drum cylinder. It is a way of gauging whether the young artisans around the drum should stop tautening the drum. He taps a few more times until the sound is right. At that moment Wang said, “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
Nailing the drum skin to the shell, which other makers do in a day, takes months to finish at Xiang Ren Ho. Onlookers, both artisans and friends who have a chance to hear a drum in the middle of the process, often said, “It sounds pretty good to me already.” But Wang frequently does not agree, often tearing off the drum skin to start over.
“A lot of people say my drum sounds good now,” Wang said, “but they don’t consider how it is going to sound in the future.” The relative thickness or tightness of the drum skin is greatly affected by the environment. During the six steps of making the drum, he thinks not only about how the drum sounds now, but how it will sound in three, five and 20 years as a result of environmental changes.
When Wang travels and hears a Xiang Ren Ho drum, even one that is several years old, he wants to be able to recognize it immediately.
A drum ordered with a maker in mainland China can usually be picked up in a week. But at Xiang Ren Ho, they might need several months just to stretch the skin head. Then 10 months have to be added for processes such as sun-drying the skin and shell. At the longest, a customer may end up waiting a decade for the instrument.
“Sometimes we give a sun-dried skin to the master before it’s completely dry and he gives it right back to us,” said Lin Xin-hung, an artisan who has been working at Xiang Ren Ho for more than seven years.
That is because in Wang’s eyes every little detail can influence how the drum will sound in 20 years.
Although working in the same field as other drum manufacturers, Xiang Ren Ho adheres to labor-intensive and time-consuming methods from start to finish so as to ensure the constancy of the sound. “I’d much rather complain to myself, than hear complaints from my customers.” It is a philosophy Wang often shares with the firm’s young artisans.
Yet when competitors can make a drum in seven days, it does not make much business sense for Xiang Ren Ho to take a year or longer to produce a drum and to guarantee it for 10 years.
“Being responsible for your drums is what’s most important.” Wang has chosen not to sell in large quantities, and is instead determined to get customers to become repeat buyers by making drums of the same high quality that his father was making 71 years ago.
Even his son Wang Kai-zheng finds this sort of determination moving.
Passing the torch: Drums resounding for a century
Wang Guei-zhi died suddenly, leaving Wang nothing besides the factory and the drum-making equipment. The son had received no training, and lacked an understanding of even such basic matters as the right temperature of water to soak the cowhide. Early on, he soaked one in boiling water, so that it ended up “overcooked.”
Starting from nothing, Wang groped his way to mastery, and his own son Wang Kai-zheng witnessed the entire process. But what made the young man decide to study the drum production process himself was a car crash four years ago.
The accident severed the cruciate ligament in his left knee, and Wang Kai-zheng was forced to convalesce at home for six months. “Every day [my father] helped me with my leg stretches and physical therapy,” he said. In the years before the accident, Wang Kai-zheng and his father had barely spoken to each other, and when they did, they sometimes exchanged angry words. But the accident drew them closer.
“Father has already made a name for himself, and I want to carry on that legacy.” Wang Kai-zheng has even recruited college classmates and other young people to join the firm. He is determined to keep the spirit of Xiang Ren Ho Bell and Drum alive.
Today, the third generation is learning the craft as it prepares to carry on the family legacy, and the factory has added workers. But Wang Xi-kun is focused on questions such as “Can my drums hold up for 100-plus years?” He is constantly pushing the envelope as he strives for excellence. For Kaohsiung’s Fo Guang Shan Monastery he completed a 7-meter drum, the largest he has ever made.
“I love drums more and more,” he said. In particular, that 71-year-old drum that Wang Xi-kun played at the concert has tremendous symbolic resonance in tying together the firm’s three generations. That is why his performance was so moving to the more than 1,000 in the audience that day.
[by Chuang Ya-chian / tr. by Jonathan Barnard]