• Head-a-Drum Demo

Shorty Palmer is fascinated with rope-tuned drums and hand drumming. He built his first drum in the early 1980's. It was an “Appalachian Slat Drum”. In 1992 he met an African Djembe and was immediately in love with the drum. The deep, rich sound was amazing, and he wanted one. Since he could not afford it, he built one with plywood. It was crude, but it worked. A year after building this drum, Shorty met an importer of African artifacts including Djembes.

The importer sold Shorty damaged Djembes at a good price. And he embarked on an incredible journey of rebuilding drums. Shorty went on to import finished djembes, shells and other drums, skin, hides and percussion instruments from the west coast of Africa and other countries. Over the years he has learned quite a lot about hand drums, and is still in the process of learning, No longer a hobby, drum building and selling became a full time business in 1996, as he wanted to help people have a good drum at reasonable prices.