Bongos are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. The pair consists of the larger hembra and the smaller macho, which are joined by a wooden bridge. They are played with both hands and usually held between the legs, although in some cases, as in classical music, they may be played with sticks or mounted on stands.
Bongo drum
Grupo Changüí de Guantánamo in 1962. The bongosero (left) is playing bongó de monte, which is much taller than the standard bongó.
Desi Arnaz playing a bokú in the 1940s. His father had banned the bongos 20 years earlier. The bokú is the most likely ancestor of the bongos.
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments. In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and chordophone.
Orchestral percussion section with timpani, unpitched auxiliary percussion and pitched tubular bells
Djembé and balafon played by Susu people of Guinea
Concussion idiophones (claves), and struck drums (conga drum)
Modern Japanese taiko percussion ensemble