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| THE EGYPTIAN TOM-TOM - At the doors of the
University of Chicago, for nearly seven months during the summer of
1893, there came out of Midway Plaisance the incessant sounds of
drums, with a peculiar and not entirely familiar rhythm, and probably
the man represented in the engraving made as much of this tiresome
noise as any other visitor to Chicago. He is portrayed on a camel,
caparisoned for the wedding procession which daily passed through the
Street in Cairo. There preceded this group, on another camel
similarly bedecked, a half-naked warrior, and it was to furnish music
for his shoulder-dance or contortions that our beater on these drums
followed behind. The kettle-drums of the Western operatic orchestra
offer, in their form and different sizes, an almost exact counterpart
of these tom-toms, but the rhythm or tune in its exactitude was never
before heard by the masses of the people, and was soon taken up as a
popular symbol for Midway Plaisance, along with "Hot-Hot-Hot!" and
"Alla good bum-bum!" The camels of Cairo
Street were taken away from
their amateur riders long enough to carry on the wedding parade, and
two of the beasts carried huge howdahs on their backs. Seated in one
of these frames on high was the bride, dressed in white, her lips and
cheeks brilliantly painted, and a veil partly concealing her eyes.
She waved a scimitar and screamed, and with her cries our drummer
pounded his kettles the harder. |
