by Berimbau » Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:30 pm
Do any of you other old timers, especially any Brits here, remember the bevy of West African congueros working on the European Jazz and Pop scene in the 60's and 70's? Nigerians Rebop Kwaku Baah and Rocky Dzidzornu, or Ghanians Guy Warren and Remi Kabaka? These cats were the first call guys to spice up a calypso or Jazz tune, most later working the rock circuit with folks like Traffic, Ginger Baker, and the Stones.
What is puzzling is that it was mainly English-speaking Ghana and Nigeria which produced these congueros. Angola and Zaire, the ancestral home of the Cuban makuta, ngoma, and tambor yuka drums, countries which went crazy for the Cuban Son in the 1950's, seems to have been immune to tumba tapping.
Titos Sampa is the only Central African guy I know who took a turn at the Cuban tumbas, but even he seems to favor his own culture area's tubs. Does anyone care to weigh in on this bit of conga minutia?
Saludos,
Berimbau
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