Bang bang ring ding ding and all thatWhat some discerning fans still might not know

If your musical group has no drums but has someome shaking a tambourine, that person is "the percussion." But if you do have drums or drum set but no other percussive instruments, you may call the drummer the "percussion section" -- though it's more likely you'll just say, "So and So on drums..."

Consider: In a rock band the rock drum set is "the drums" while a set of bongos may easily be viewed as part of the "percussion section."

In bluegrass there typically isn't much going with percussion, but it's certainly allowed -- except for the verboten drums. Old-time rural percussion might include washboard, tambourine, those Mexican things you shake and someone rhythmically batting the side of a wooden box. That way, everyone could get in on the music-making.

Now a group with a drum set and other percussive instruments can't be bothered with such verbal niceties. "Drums" means "drum set" and "percussion" means other percussive instruments.

The Oxford Language dictionary gives us these definitions as its top two:

1. Musical instruments played by striking with the hand or with a handheld or pedal-operated stick or beater, or by shaking, including drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, bells, and rattles.

2. The striking of one solid object with or against another with some degree of force, as in the clattering percussion of objects striking the walls and the shutters. Technically, a piano is a percussive instrument because soft hammers strike the strings.

Well, doesn't bass fiddle stand in for drums since both sort of soundmakers are used to keep time? So then, someone says, bass is a percussive instrument. Nope. You can make a case for the bass doing the job of a percussive instrument, But it's means of forming sound is its string set placed over a container holding a large volume of air. That larger volume is necessary to get the low, reverberating bass sound.

I post this silly bit of trivia in response to implications I have noticed that drums are not among the percussive instruments.