Open Your Drum

Hi. My name is Max. Good to have you here.

I've been making drums since 2016. Before that I spent 18 years in finance — mostly in telecom, my last post heading a department. Spreadsheets, numbers, procurement. Nothing that pointed toward a workshop full of wood shavings and goat skin.

I was born in 1979, in what was still Soviet Ukraine. I grew up on the street — football, fights, a broken arm and collarbone, the usual scrapes of that time. The nineties were hard, and I could have stayed in them for good, like some of my friends did. But I found the strength to walk away and keep moving. Looking back, I think the universe was already leading me somewhere — I just couldn't read it yet.

In December 2012 I was attacked on the street and suffered a serious head injury. There was surgery, then a long recovery. Something shifted in me afterward — not only my health, but the way I see the world. For a long time I thought a full life was behind me. It turned out otherwise.

I wanted a drum for myself first. I looked at what was on the market, couldn't find one I trusted, and decided to make my own. The first ones were simple, almost crude. Then I designed the "Tree of Life" handle and spent years refining it into the form I make today. It defined my style.

Today Open Your Drum is a workshop — not a polished studio, but a house and a gazebo I built myself: wood shavings, tools, and work. One workshop, one pair of hands: I assemble, finish, and tune every drum myself. That's how my lines came about: the Tree of Life, Slavic and Siberian drums, along with beaters, rattles, and amulets.

Much of what you see in my collections are images of drum spirits — some I came up with myself, others I took from old traditions and reworked. Every finished drum takes on its own image, its soul, and the recognizable hand of my work.

My paternal grandfather tanned goat hides. It was only after I'd started making drums that I learned he had once made a drum for my father. And my maternal grandmother was the village healer — a "whisperer" who used prayer to cure children of fright. And the bond with my forebears runs through my craft too: the skill from my grandfather, the spiritual side from my grandmother.

Through what I've lived, and through that bond with my forebears, the ideas of the universe, energy, shamanism are not empty words to me. I came to this not because I read Castaneda, but through my own experience — and because I found myself in this work.

For a long time I didn't try to make "Living shamanic drums" my slogan. But the people who received my drums convinced me of it — in their gratitude and their reviews.

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Two roads to a drum

In the old traditions a shamanic drum comes into the world along one of two honest roads. The one who will use it makes it with their own hands — or it is made for them, by the hands of a master.

Among the peoples of Siberia and the steppe that master had a name: the Darkhan, the smith. The Darkhan forged the Shaman's tools and the metal that hangs on the drum and the coat, and was held to be close kin to the Shaman. The Yakut still say it plainly — the smith and the Shaman come from the same nest.

I was recently called a Darkhan. I accepted the name, and I carry it with respect.

I make drums, amulets, ongons, and accessories for shamanic drums and practice — so they can serve in someone else's hands.

Both of these roads I keep open. If you want to make your own drum, I'll show you how. If you want one made for you, that is what this workshop is. Two roads. Both real.

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Welcome to the workshop of living drums — and open the drum that's yours.

Max · MGdrums · Open Your Drum