Conga
Conga drums are an integral part of most Latin American music. In North America, everyone has heard of a conga line and sadly, most of us happen How to play conga drums be forced to join a single at 1 point or yet another, often in the course of a wedding reception. However the music in the conga is far as well diverse to become pigeonholed as wedding reception music. These instruments are used not merely in genres like salsa and rumba, but in Afro-Caribbean religious music too. Conga drums are an extremely essential facet of life in South America.
The bodies of conga drums are “staved,” or created of multiple strips of wood or fiberglass, similar towards the construction of a barrel. Probabilities are that the ancestors of modern day congas have been, in fact, created from salvaged barrels. The drum heads are of rawhide or synthetic materials and are screw-tensioned. The height from the average conga drum is about three feet, as well as the instruments are usually played in sets of two to 4. They are able to be played from either a sitting or standing position, even though for the latter, the drums has to be mounted on a rack. An artist who plays conga is called a “conguero.”
Although the average height of a conga drum is about three feet, there is certainly really adequate size variation to warrant different names for various sized drums. Nonetheless, there’s some confusion more than these names. 1 supply maintains that the drums are called, in order of biggest to smallest, the “tumba,” the “conga,” the “quinto,” the “requinto” and also the “Ricardo,” the final getting named for Desi Arnaz’s character of Ricky Ricardo on “I Adore Lucy.”
An additional source calls the biggest the “tumba,” but refers towards the smallest because the “nino” and gives no names for the middle sizes. Still other names include the “segundo” as well as the “supertumba.” Clearly, there’s no standardized set of names. Even the term “conga drum” can sometimes be confusing. Whilst some specialists preserve “conga” may be utilized in both English and Spanish, other individuals aver that it ought to be utilized only in English and that “tumbadoras” ought to be employed in Spanish. All and all, it may be quite bewildering.
But there’s nothing confusing concerning the rhythms in the conga drums. To generate these rhythms, congueros use 5 basic tones and techniques: the open tone, the muffled tone, the bass tone, the slap, and also the touch.
The open tone is just what its name implies-a clear resonant tone with a distinct pitch produced by striking four fingers near the rim from the head. The muffled tone is just like the open tone, however the fingers are held against the head to muffle the sound. The bass tone is made by striking the head using the complete palm in the hand. The slap technique produces a popping sound, and the touch, once more as the name implies, is actually a technique of barely touching the fingers or the heel from the hand to the drum head. A final technique exists in which the conguero uses his elbow to apply pressure to various parts in the head. This is not a conventional approach, nevertheless it is generally employed in modern salsa and rumba.
As pointed out, the character of Ricky Ricardo helped popularize the conga, although the instrument he played on the show was truly much more comparable for the Cuban “boku,” an additional type of drum. The music from the conga remains well-known right now, in element due to the current recognition of Latin music and Latin ballroom dances.