What Use Are Gourds?
According to authors Summit and Widess (The Complete Book of Gourd Craft, Lark Books, NY, 1999) musical instruments of remarkably diverse forms made from gourds have been identified in every recorded ancient culture. Commonest amongst them are rattles, using the inner seeds with or without additional seeds and pebbles, shells, etc. Gourds are used as resonators in many instruments including drums, the marimba-like belaphon , the gorgeous Indian sitar and many other stringed instruments. In addition they have also served as horns, flutes, whistles, ocarinas and other wind instruments of exotic form. As containers gourds have been used for everything imaginable and then some! Perhaps the earliest and still the commonest use has been for water, as buckets, bottles or dippers. Almost as frequently gourds have been used for storage of dried goods, such as seeds, nuts, flour etc. Gourds have featured prominently in the fermentation of joyous fluids. In many instances they have served not onl
