Strange Instruments Of The World #192 The Khamel-Khazi Knob-Naker
Travelers in Outer Mongolia have frequently described odd sounds in the night, not unlike cats caught out in a thunderstorm. Very few Westerners, however, have been privileged to witness the source of this phenomenon. Those who have, reported herds of a thousand or more camel-riding tribesmen, each animal equipped with a pair of stout drums. 
Galloping at full pelt beneath the desert moon, the riders pound wildly at these instruments, employing furious rhythms in strange and complex time signatures while wailing like banshees.
These are the Khamel-Khazis. The drums, known as Knob-Nakers, are made from lavatory pans salvaged from a train crash in the Gobi Desert over a hundred years ago, and beaten with lavatory brushes. At the age of 21, the tribesmen are ritually circumcised and their foreskins (known locally as eightskins due to their enormous size) are meticulously sewn together by the tribeswomen during the long winter months to form skins for the drums.
In 1952, 850 Khamel-Khazis were brought to London by the EFDSS but the camels
were far too big to get the through the doors of Cecil Sharp House (and the caretaker went berserk with rage at the amount of camel crap on the steps). There was only room for eight in the garden and the local council threatened to sue because of the chaos resulting from the line of camels and tribesmen stretching back to Camden Town station.
The drums could be heard as far away as East Grinstead as the tribesmen insisted on playing until the early hours of Sunday morning when they all fell from their camels in a drunken stupor after imbibing the copious quantities of fermented asses milk they had brought with them.
Despite numerous attempts to invite them to Sidmouth, the Khamel-Khazis have not yet returned to Britain.
Permalink | http://royallibertymorris.org.uk/articles/scuzzbag/The-Khamel-Khazi/
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