The bodhrán is a single-headed Irish frame drum, traditionally made with a goatskin head over a circular wooden frame, played either bare-handed or with a small double-headed stick called a cipín (also called a tipper). One hand holds and presses against the inside of the skin to control pitch and resonance while the other strikes the head — a technique that lets players produce a surprising range of tone from a deceptively simple instrument.

The instrument’s name most likely comes from the Irish word bodhar (“deaf” or “dull-sounding”), though some researchers connect it instead to an old word for an agricultural tray. Its most plausible origin is a riddle — a sieve frame used for winnowing grain or drying wool — with the wire mesh removed and a skin substituted in its place. A near-identical instrument existed across the water as the English/Cornish “riddle drum” or crowdy-crawn.

The romantic version of bodhrán history claims it as an ancient Celtic ritual or war drum predating Christianity. The documented version is more recent and, frankly, more interesting: the bodhrán had no serious presence in Irish traditional music until composer Seán Ó Riada and percussionist Peadar Mercier brought it to the stage in the 1960s folk revival with Ceoltóirí Chualann, and it wasn’t featured at the Fleadh Cheoil — Ireland’s major traditional music competition — until 1973. From there, players like Tommy Hayes and John Joe Kelly pushed the instrument’s technical vocabulary into the form most people now recognize.