Why does American traditional music (e.g. old-time fiddle, folk, bluegrass, etc.) exclude drumming?

Question

I'm a trained percussionist who for years has appreciated traditional American folk music. I've also been frustrated for years by the complete lack of any drums in this music. I've searched the web and found no good answers.

I recognize any answer would be necessarily complex and have to take into account the evolution of music in Western culture. But that's no excuse for there being no answer...

There are many responses to my question that I consider unsatisfactory. These answers include things like...

• The melody and harmony itself is rhythmic! There's no need for drums! (Sorry, weak answer--there is plenty of rhythmic melody and harmony in music from cultures where drums also play a big role. The presence or absence of rhythm in melody and harmony is irrelevant to the presence or absence of drums.)

• There are "drums" in American folk music---just look at the spoons, the washboard, clogging and flatfoot dancing, etc. (Sorry, another weak answer, because while they're all forms of percussion, none of these are drums.)

• Nobody could build or play drums in the hollows of Appalachia, so they didn't have them! (Sorry, another weak answer--if people could make and learn to play a fiddle, they could easily make and learn to play a drum!)

• Drums just aren't needed in American folk music--it sounds good without them! (Again, another weak, subjective answer--fiddles and gutbuckets are no more or less "needed" than drums in this music.)

As I mentioned above, there are plenty of cultures around the world whose music has everything American folk music has (melody, modality, simplicity, etc.) yet in many of these cultures drums also play a key role. So why not in American folk music?

Did early Americans (or the Scots/Irish/English/Dutch/Germans who emigrated to America) have something against drums? Were they considered "primitive" or "evil?"

The same question can be asked of folk music of the British Isles, which is also devoid of any drumming. The one notable exception to all of this, of course, is the bodhran in Irish music. And the popularity of the bodhran suggests that there is no inherent bias against drums in this music. The bodhran fits in beautifully and plays an integral role in Irish music. So how or why did the "drumming influence" of the bodhran not spread to other forms of folk music?

Were early Anglo-Saxons so daft that it never occurred to a single one of them to beat on something with their hands or sticks to create rhythm? (Conversely, how exactly did drums evolve to be such a central instrument in African, Indian, Chinese and Japanese music? Were these people smarter than early Anglo-Saxons and just figured out how to make and play drums where the Anglos didn't?)

Discussion and speculation (and facts too, of course) are appreciated! :-) (And please try to avoid posts like "American folk music doesn't have drums because it doesn't have drums. It's different." This much is clear--but I'd like to dig a bit deeper!)

Answer 1

I’m sorry you don’t find “spoons, washboards, and flatfoot dancing” an acceptable answer. I would invite you to consider that spoons, washboards, and feet all feature some things in common that drums do not—they’re inexpensive, they don’t take up much space, they’re very portable, and they’re ubiquitous—every household, even in impoverished Appalachia, had spoons, washboards, and feet. When I see a folk music tradition create percussion using common household implements and their own body parts, the conclusion seems obvious: they were making do with what they had.

Update: Longer, more involved answer

To begin with, let's acknowledge that there is no one such thing as American traditional music. At a minimum, American traditional music includes:

• Cajun Zydeco (which features drums)
• Mississippi Delta Blues (mostly solo acoustic guitar)
• Chicago Electric Blues (again, features drums)
• Appalachian String Band (umbrella term for old time & bluegrass)
• New Orleans Jazz (drums optional)
• Kansas City (and then Harlem Renaissance, etc.) Jazz (drums prominently featured)

You're asking primarily about Appalachian String Band music and why that music doesn't feature drums.

Ok. Consider who created that music and their circumstances. The Appalachian settlers were primarily Scots-Irish fleeing extreme poverty and persecution by the British.

If you were one of those immigrants, imagine the circumstances of your journey—you're extremely poor and you'll arrive having traveled across an ocean owning only what you were able to carry. Fiddles are small. You could maybe carry a fiddle. Drums, though? Probably not.

And so now you've settled in Appalachia. You're still extremely poor, as is everyone around you, but some people have fiddles, and everyone has spoons, washboards, and feet. So on Saturday nights everyone gathers around and makes the most of what they've got, and a folk music tradition is born.

In the comments, I see a question about guitars, banjos, and bass fiddles. Those came later. Banjos and steel-string guitars are both American innovations—banjos, in particular, come from the African-American slave tradition and were originally made from gourds. And bass fiddles are rare in old-time folk music until much later. Even today, it's quite common to show up to an old-time jam and find numerous fiddles and guitars, but no basses (that's why, despite the fact that I play guitar and banjo pretty well, I always go to a jam with a bass, because I'm almost always the only bass there).

In short: folk music (almost by its very definition) is the outcome of a people making the music they liked with the tools available to them. Poverty-stricken Scots-Irish Appalachian farmers had fiddles, spoons, washboards, and feet, and they built a folk music tradition from those tools on hand.

Answer 2

I think fife and drum music would be the genre with exactly what you are looking for.

I don't know if you would exclude that genre for some reason (martial music, the tunes aren't specifically American origin, etc?) but it seems that a lot of the repertoire in that genre includes popular folk tunes, and of course, there are bona fide drums.