Egyptian Belly Dancing : Finger Cymbals

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Sahira and I’m here on behalf of Expert Village to tell you all about belly dancing. Finger cymbals are very commonly used in middle-eastern dance. I typically call them zills though there are a number of different ways that they are named. You want to get a good pair of sturdy cymbals that have a two-slot configuration, so that you hook your elastic in, in two spots makes it a lot more sturdy than the type that have one hole drilled in the middle. So once you get your zills you want to adjust your elastics so that they’re just tight enough that your fingers turn blue after about five minutes then you know you have them on correctly, you don’t want them too loose or they may fly off while you’re playing or rotator around your fingers, so it makes it really difficult to play. You put one zill on your thumb just around that top knuckle and one on your middle finger in the same space right above the top knuckle, you want to the zills when your hands close to face each other squarely."