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Hello congueros/congueras!
I was just watching some old footage of Muñequitos on YouTube (great stuff) and I noticed that the quintero in the film was wearing some sort of metal can strapped onto his right wrist. Can someone explain what this is? My guess is that it adds some sort of high pitched sound to the quinto licks.

Thanks,
afrocubarico

Hello afrocubarico, without seeing the clip, I can only guess what you have seen are in fact metal shakers in the form of a light metal can around the top of the particular drummers wrist, certain drummers (drummers role) characteristically use wrist shakers in both yuka and rumba, particularly when boxes or cajones are played as drums.
Normally in yuka it is the drummer playing the Caja part, I have an old documentary on VHS where the Muñequitos de Matanzas' quintero is wearing the shakers I mentioned.

The wrist metal shakers are called, "Nkembi", and they have a Congolese (Bantú) origin.

Hope this helps,

Jorge Ginorio

Thank you gentlemen. I guess this is a similar technique to the chaworo on the bata drums, creating bell sounds upon striking the drum.

afrocubarico

Although the chaguoro/chaworo is affixed to the drum and not to one's hands....here's a question for you bataleros out there...aren't the chaguoro and chaguori attributed to a specific orisha? Ogun?

Also the nkembi question also hints towards the relationship between bantu/congo drumming and rumba, since in recordings (especially munequitos recordings) you'll here Jesus Alfonso playing quinto with the nkembi/shaker on his wrist...

Hi Ralph,

I put the answer to your question in a new thread called "Chaworo" in the Bata Drums section.

TA