ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, Schaeffner’s analysis of percussive adornments of the body as causative of dance branches out. “Percussion—which is derived from stamping on the ground or from hands hitting the body—is executed using other types of instruments.” He moves to the drum, which is nothing but a cavity, often covered by a membrane, revisiting the argument of the phenomenon of resonance to which he only alluded in his Preface. The sticks that follow the drum can also strike wooden tongues or lamellae: this brings us to the bala and the xylophone, and consequently to the introduction of a melodic voice. Schaeffner never neglects the ethnographic side of the study of instruments, a side that remains connected to the body: he spends some time discussing the analogies between drums and sexual organs, for example.
