A Technical Definition: Finger Cymbals

6. The dancers often use some type of rhythm instrument to aid the musicians, or as the
sole accompaniment to their dance.

Finger cymbals are called "zills" (Turkish), or "Sagat" (Egyptian). Whether or not the dancer
uses finger cymbals has more to do with how accomplished he/she is using them than whether
it's "traditional". One modern trend in Egypt has been for dancers to hire a musician to play
finger cymbals for them, but this may merely be some sort of statement that they can afford to
hire a cymbal player. Some raks sharki dancers in Egypt also come from gypsy families and thus
combine the rhythmic traditions of both culture, and play their finger cymbals with great skill.

The first century Roman writer Martial, and his contemporary Isidore of Seville mention a dancer
performing moves characteristic of Eastern dance,and using a rhythmic instrument. Martial
refers to the skill of the women of Gades (Cadiz) in Baetica (Andalucía) in his lines on
Telethusa, who was so bewitching that the man who acquired her as a slave bought her back as a
wife. He had seen her in the marketplace "performing wanton gestures to the accompaniment of
Baetic castanets, which she had been taught to play in the manner of the Gaditanian women."
These dancers of Cadiz are thought by Esther Van Loo to be Phoenician or Cretan in origin. This
is a reasonable assumption because there were Phoenician traders in Spain as early as the
eleventh century B.C., and Cadiz, one of the oldest towns in Europe, was founded by the
Phoenicians. Loo further concludes that castanets themselves were first known to Spain in
connection with a Syrian fertility rite in honor of Isis or Cybele. Other scholars have concurred
with this idea. Fig. 4 shows one of these "castanet dancers" as portrayed on pottery.

In Virgil's "Copa," the tavern hostess dances in front of her inn to lure a passerby: "A Syrian
tavern-hostess, her head tied in a Greek scarf, trained in moving her quivering sides to the
Crotalum, springs gaily drunken from her smoky inn shaking her rattling reeds against her
elbow...." Whatever type of rhythm instrument she is playing, be it a pair of clappers or metal
or wooden castanet, her dance sounds distinctively like a belly dance.

If we follow this idea back to its roots, it is easy to see how the sensual dances which began with
Greek mystery rites and comedy dances, where the dancer might have also played a type of
cymbal or clapper, travelled to Spain where the dance evolved to what is today Flamenco.
Secondly, that another form of this dance developed throughout the Middle and Near East as
belly dance. Both types of dance are also associated with the Gypsies, who came out of India,
through Persia, and spread throughout Europe by the Middle Ages.

The earliest dancer's finger cymbals made of metal are those found in the area of Thebes (c.200
BC) with a large central boss and upturned rim, measuring 2-7/16" in diameter. A slightly larger
pair was also attributed to Thebes (c.200 BC) with a diameter of 3-3/8". Another pair of bronze
finger cymbals from ancient Greece, dated to c. 500 B.C. measures 3-1/2" in diameter. They
have engraved on the rim "OATAS EIMI", signifying "of Oata" on the rim. Thus, Oata, a
dancing girl is thought to be the original owner.
These are more correctly called "crotales", (or krotala) meaning a small bronze cymbal.
They were also mounted in sets on stick handles as clappers. This Figure** shows a dancer with
krotalista on the left. However, one of the Thebes sets, as well as a set found in Pompeii (50
AD) are connected with a cord or chain approximately 2 1/2 cymbal's diameter in length. This
is a critical measurement because this short a cord this short is awkward to play with two hands.
In modern cultures such as Thailand, where the cymbals (ching chang) are still the major rhythm
instrument, it is played by a seated musician with two hands and a much longer cord. With
shorter cord a dancer could wrap it about one or more fingers and have a pair on each hand.
There is, however, a form of pair cymbals with the shorter string still in use in folk dance in
India, where they are called manjira.

When I actually made a pair of these by connecting a pair of cymbals with the short string, it was
apparent that by placing the string over the middle finger, or middle two fingers, one can shake
them rhythmically. I have found no surviving ancient pictures to support this theory, but it is
known that castanets, with references to metal castanets, were used in ancient Greece.

It is said that Spanish Gypsies, who are traditionally associated with the spread of Eastern dance,
did not originally use castanets, instead moving with "easy, undulating 'filigranos' (soft
movements of the arms and hands), reflecting his/her Eastern ethnic heritage. The early Gypsies
felt no need for devices beyond their own innate, rhythmic hand clapping (palmadas), finger
snapping (pitos), clicking of the tongue, and often tapping a stick (báculo). These sounds were
further embellished by the shouts (gritos) and expressions of animation that conjured the magic
(duende) of the moment". Even though gypsies have taken up the use of castanets, many still
play them in the primitive manner, on the middle finger instead using the fingers to rake across
them on the thumb. Thus, references to "metal castanets" are more logical than it might appear
at first; and they leave serious confusion as to exactly what these instruments were and how they
were played. Modern finger cymbals are played with a cymbal on each middle finger and thumb,
as in fig. 6.

Whatever these instruments might have been, according to the Greek poets, they were no tinkling
delicate instruments. A hymn to the goddess Diana says, "My comrade strikes with nimble hand
the well-gilt, brazen sounding castanet". Euripides uses castanets as the epitome of noise when
he has Silenus rebuke his companions, "What's the uproar? Why this Bacchus hubbub? There's
no Bacchus here, no bronze clackers or rattling castanets?"