The Last Tassa Maker in Berbice

Rampersaud Bharrat has been stretching goatskin over clay-fired shells since he was eleven years old. Now seventy-three, he is the last practicing tassa maker in East Bank Berbice. His workshop — a low concrete building behind his house on the bank of the Canje River — smells permanently of hide glue and linseed oil. When I visited him last November, he was preparing skins for a wedding order in New Amsterdam, soaking six hides in the river for the fourth consecutive day.

From Clay to Rhythm

The tassa shell itself is shaped from local clay, fired in a pit kiln Bharrat dug into the riverbank forty years ago. He sources his goatskins from farmers along the Berbice River — the best hides come from animals raised on pasture near the Mazaruni. Each drum takes roughly fourteen days from raw clay to tuned instrument, and the final step of stretching the wet hide over the shell and binding it with sisal cord requires three pairs of hands and a patience that Bharrat says only the old-timers still possess.

“A drum that is rushed will crack before the first wedding is finished. The clay must learn the shape of the hide.”