A Basel drum/ The "Baslerischste" drum
The Basel Drum by Eduard Neuenschwander is a unique object in every respect and view. Its builder tells its story in an account written in Basel German and with much humor. As a child he joined the young guard of the Spezi-Clique, but soon stopped drumming ("e kalti Fanacht isch z'schuld gsi dra"). in 1970 the passion for drumming took hold of him again and he learned drumming again autodidactically by recording excerpts from the "Drummeli" on the radio and replaying them. At the same time he made the plan to build his own drum. He taught himself the necessary handicraft techniques: From ordering the sheet metal (phosphor bronze) in a Hamburg rolling mill to making the wooden hoops and the string lock in the shape of a basilisk, the drum was made by himself.
He paid particular attention to a special decoration: for example, he photographed Basel in several views from the Kleinbasler Ufer (Waisenhaus), put the pictures together to form a panorama, and then transferred the pictures to the drum frame using etching techniques. From 1971 onwards, he regularly took part in "dr grescht Plausch am Gässle" with this gem - where the photographer of the Basler Nationalzeitung also discovered him once and presented his drum as "E glungeni Idee" in 1974. Several attempts were made to buy his drum from him - it has now found a worthy place in the Museum of Music.