Shaker eggs are fun instruments, especially for kids, because they are small, easy to hold, easy to play, and they make several different sounds. This one is pretty big. Much larger than the small plastic commercial ones that can be purchased for a couple of bucks a piece.

Our entry in the heavyweight class of shaker eggs is El Huevote (Spanish for “big egg”). Instruments like this are also known as palm or hand shakers. The original palm shaker was almost certainly a small gourd that was simply allowed to dry with the seeds left inside to provide the sound.

The sound produced by natural gourd shakers is soft though, and not very much like a modern shaker egg. The only way to get more sound out of one is to cut it open and replace the seeds with something else. This presents a problem—egg gourds are thin shelled, easily broken and are not well suited to taking an extended beating from an internal pile of hard material that is much heavier than the seeds it was originally intended to hold.