Not very far from the city of Can Tho, in the south of Vietnam, you can go to visit tiny islands of the Mekong delta in Ben Tre. When visiting these islands, you can meet various people who offer you to taste products coming from their orchards, drink tea, propose you to hold a boa constrictor on your shoulders, have a trip in cart on the small paths of the islands, drive you by dugout along foliations of palm trees.Just cool stuff to do as a tourist and escape from common despairing grey urban landscapes. But it is also possible to find there some musical handcraft industry. We acquired a foot percussion on these islands which is used by guitar soloists to get beat on their melodies.
Don't laugh when looking at the small size of this percussion ! It is a very powerful instrument and can cause an auditive embarrassment if you play it helpless just beside your ear.
This percussion has a very incisive and timbered sounding that can be heared far away from its source ; further than the sound of a guitar, for example. The foot perc distinguishes itself very clearly from strings. It is used to announce key moments in a song in order to indicate rhythmic transitions to singers or the start/stop of an improvisation.
