by konkoba98 » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:31 am
A couple questions for you academic minded posters who's posts on this forum have been extremely helpful and entertaining. I'm an 'intermediate' player who discovered the drum later in life and have not had the luck of being surrounded by other players and teachers and has therefore learned much by an academic approach from whatever resources I could get my hands on. One of my favorite activities in addition to studying well established rhythms and techniques, is to create and invent novel styles that are usually inspired by rhythms from other instruments and musics and adapting them to the congas and making them as 'Cuban' as I can given what I know of Cuban conga technique, bata, clave concepts, etc etc. One that I'm currently working on is bringing up some interesting questions for me. Thanks in advance for any and all who reply. FYI, I've already read pretty much all the forums here regarding these topics I will bring up in addition to literature written or referenced by some of you, ex: The Clave Matrix, etc. Thanks also for all of that and if there are answers to my questions that I've overlooked, please refer me.
I'll try to video myself and post this rhythm asap but for now I'll just have to notate it as best I can.
It is triple meter, lasts 2 clave or standard bell patterns, and is played split hand similar to how many of us would play a bembe adaptation on 3 drums w/ the left hand on quinto and the right hand playing the conga and tumba, except with this one the left hand is on the middle tuned drum (to the left side), and the right hand plays the low drum (right side) and high drum (center). It is based off or inspired by 2 West African dundun/djembe rhythms, 1. the sangban part to Abondon 2. the Dundun/Sangban melody of Kurubadon (from the Dununba family). This adaptation is obviously not meant to be representative of these rhythms at all and I've taken artistic license to change things a bit when adapting them to congas.
mid conga (left/nondom hand):
|| S . O S . O S . O S . O ||
high conga (small letters) and TUMBA (CAPS):
|| o O . O . O . O o . o . . s . s . s . O o . o . ||
This, again, is an adaptation of multiple parts from 2 different rhythms, see those rhythms if you'd like to see where the adaptation came from, I won't bother trying to notate them for now. The reason I used these particular parts (Abondon sangban and Kurubadon dun/sangban melody) was because they had similar rhythmic structures that crossed over 2 clave/bells. The common phrase tying the 2 together was the following pattern which can be related to clave/standard bell in a variety of ways (displacement, direction of clave, shift of a note, etc). This pattern can be found in the high drum/low drum pattern notated above and is the defining characteristic of this rhythm (the mid drum part is a more simple time keeping pattern).
|| . X . X . X . . X . X . || repeated twice bc the drum melody repeats after 2 clave lengths
|| 1 . . 2 . . 3 . . 4 . . ||
Again, this can be related to clave in many ways.
1. son clave displaced by 1 beat
2. the latent notes of son clave
3. a 2/3 son clave w/ the 3rd clave note displaced
4. etc etc,
So, after all that rambling, here is my dilemma:
1. Since most W. African rhythms follow a 'clave concept' as defined by some of you guys ( a Q&A of rhythmic tension and stability), how is that expressed in this rhythm using westerners terminology of cuban clave... is this 2/3 son, 2/3 rumba, 3/2 son, 3/2 rumba? How do you hear it? Is this question even relevant?
2. It seems to me that it is 2/3, or that the tension arises in the 2nd part of phrase, the " O o . o " part, and answered by the first part of the phrase. Recall that it is a 2 clave long phrase, so you see the " O o . o " part twice. I don't recall any 6/8 or 12/8 Cuban folkloric patterns (conga, bata, other) that have this 2/3 feel. Come to think of it, I don't know if there are any 6/8 or 12/8 popular pieces that are 2/3... but I may be unaware. Are there any? Am I wrong here?
3. Now that I have a pattern, I want to begin developing phrases and variations and inserting licks, etc. Are there any bata or other rhythms that share some of the rhythmic principles of this rhythm and could serve as good examples to develop phrasing?
4. I'm assuming that many of the African rhythms that were brought to Cuba and subsequently adapted to the conga (bembe, abakua, makuta, etc) as it became a more popular instrument, underwent a similar process that I'm attempting (albeit much better and more natural than my attempts). We see it now with bata rhythms adapted to congas. While many of those who were/are instrumental in how these adaptations occur may not use the academic or western approach that my questions are based on, is this not what has happened and continues to happen, at least roughly?
Colin
Last edited by
konkoba98 on Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:00 am, edited 4 times in total.