DRUMMING WITH A DAF IS A-OKAY

If you’re a Saudi musician the daf drum will be your best friend.

Being a musician in Saudi Arabia is tricky business. Because Islam is so elemental to public culture in Saudi Arabia, and because some of the more fundamentalist (and outspoken) Muslim clerics consider must to be “haraam” (forbidden/sacred) the Saudi state has historically adopted a firm stance against all but the most traditional or devotional music. The playing of any instrument beyond the voice (and the beat of the small “daf drum,” as long as it doesn’t have metal or jingles, though only on carefully prescribed occasions…like making this video…?) is particularly questionable.