by jorge » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:21 am
One of the nice things about cajones is the inspiring history of the cajon as a musical instrument, which came about largely because they are basically free or cheaply made. You can make a good sounding cajon from scrap wood you find in the street. If you don't hang out in the streets, or are in a hurry, you can splurge and spend 10 or 15 bucks at a lumberyard or Home Depot for the wood. A pencil, paper, ruler, saw, file, hammer, some glue, some wire nails, some sandpaper, a vacuum cleaner to clean up, and a little bit of ingenuity or someone else who knows how to make one, and you can build it in an evening. Don't like how it sounds? Modify your design and build another one, or modify the one you have. Once you have the tools and some understanding of what determines the sound, you can make them for a few dollars and a couple hours' work.
Cajones don't have to sound like a wooden box, good players can make music on basically any cajon. People underestimate the time and skill needed to learn to play a cajon. Getting or making the cajon is less than 2% of the story, developing the art of making music with a cajon is the other 98%+.
It is a good thing is that cajones are not as loud as congas. They can give a better balance with singers, especially in acoustic folkloric music. At a rumba, you don't have to be always telling the "concussionists" to play softer so the singers can be heard. With real musicians playing who know about dynamics and actually listen and play for the sound there is no advantage, because they play at an appropriate volume, but that is not always the situation.
The danger is that a lot of people try to play a cajon like a skinned drum, hitting much too hard, trying to do slaps the same as on a conga or djembe. You can seriously hurt your hands overplaying a cajon, not to mention breaking the fibers of the plywood batter surface and killing the sound forever.