Middle Eastern Percussion Workshop with Hogır Göregen: Darbuka, Riq, Daf, Bendir
On 6 March 2022, Berlin-based percussionist Hogır Göregen led a Middle Eastern percussion workshop at Tapadum in Faenza — darbuka, riq, daf, and bendir, technique and rhythm followed by a jam session.
The day after his concert with the Kara Güneş Trio, Hogır Göregen stayed at Tapadum for a hands-on workshop on Middle Eastern percussion — three hours of practical technique followed by a jam session.
Nine people attended. Thirty more had been thinking about it.
The Program
The workshop ran from 14:00 to 17:00, followed by a jam session from 17:00 to 18:30. Hogır covered four instruments across six structured areas.
Instruments: darbuka, riq, daf, bendir
- General introduction to each instrument — history, construction, sound characteristics
- Traditional techniques
- Modern techniques
- Special techniques developed by Hogır Göregen himself
- Traditional rhythms
- Rhythmic variations
One detail worth noting: the specific content was shaped together with participants at the start of the session. Hogır came with a framework, not a fixed script. The workshop adapted to who was in the room and what they needed.
Four Instruments, One Family
The darbuka, riq, daf, and bendir belong to the same broad family of Middle Eastern frame and goblet drums, but each has its own character, technique, and musical role.
The darbuka — a goblet-shaped drum played with both hands — is the most widely known of the four, common across North Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey. Its sound ranges from a deep bass stroke to a sharp, bright snap, and its technique includes a vocabulary of named finger strokes that take years to master cleanly.
The riq is a small tambourine with five pairs of brass cymbals and a thin skin head, central to Arabic classical and folk music. It requires both rhythmic precision and the control of the cymbal shimmer — a deceptively complex instrument in skilled hands.
The daf — which Tapadum audiences had first encountered in Darioush Madani’s workshop the previous year — appeared here in a different context: not as a Sufi ritual instrument but as a member of the Middle Eastern percussion family, with its own modern technical vocabulary.
The bendir is a large frame drum with a snare string inside, giving it a buzzing resonance beneath the fundamental stroke. Associated with North African Sufi traditions and Andalusian music, it brings a darker, more atmospheric quality to the ensemble.
Hogır Göregen as Teacher
A performer of Hogır’s calibre — someone who has studied tabla in Benares, mastered the Middle Eastern frame drum tradition in Istanbul, and built a career on stages across Europe — brings something to a workshop that technical instruction alone cannot provide: the understanding of how these techniques actually function in live musical contexts.
His “special techniques” segment gave participants access to approaches he has developed through years of performance and cross-cultural study — material that does not appear in method books because it has not been written down.
After the Workshop: Jam Session
From 17:00 to 18:30, participants stayed to play together. With four percussion instruments in the room and a teacher who could demonstrate rhythmic frameworks on any of them, the session gave everyone a chance to apply what they had learned immediately.
That transition from workshop to jam session is something we try to build into every educational event at Tapadum. Theory and technique become real only when they meet other musicians.
See Hogır Göregen in Action
Two recordings that give a sense of his playing:
Tapadum stocks darbuka, riq, daf, and bendir instruments from our workshop in Brisighella. Explore our percussion collection or follow our upcoming workshops.
Özgür Yalçın is the founder of Tapadum and the founding member of Karagüneş. He has performed ethnic and world music across Europe for over twenty-five years and builds custom instruments from Tapadum’s workshop in Brisighella, Italy.