North America’s frame drum story splits in two directions. To the south, Mexico and Puerto Rico carry forward instruments brought across the Atlantic during colonization, reshaped by African and Indigenous hands into the pandero jarocho and the pandereta of bomba y plena. Further north, Indigenous nations maintain their own deep traditions of hand and frame drumming tied to ceremony and song — practices that predate any of this site’s other instruments and that vary enormously from nation to nation. We’re building out this region’s pages now; see Mexico and Puerto Rico below.