This drum belongs to a group of musical instruments from the Raffles Museum's Borneo collection. It was probably played by the Iban Dayak of Sarawak. The drums were not in common use as gongs were in the music of North Borneo. Tom Harnett Harrisson (1911–1976), an early explorer and a well-known Borneo expert, mentions this object in the record books of the old Raffles Museum, ‘I have met these among the Ulu Ai and Balau groups, S.W. Sarawak’.These drums are also thought to be made from hollowed logs with goat, monkey, or deer skin stretched tightly over one or either end, and lashed on with rattan.
