Cándido Camero's first instrument was not the bongo, first of all. It had been the tres. Perhaps this is the reason for his finger action on congas as well as on the bongo. Otherwise Bobby Sanabria is probably the person who can tell us the most about Cándido.
Cándido's style is archaic, on bongo
and on the congas. He is a very old man now, born 1921, and he was old when this clip was recorded. He has recorded with major names in US-American Jazz and Afro-Cuban Jazz. He is a living legend and as such particularly interesting to study. He tends to maintain what Johnny Conga calls the "split-hand-technique", with each hand basically staying on one drum, like playing tabla.
Cándido's extremely light, almost whispering touch (you may call it subtle) made him the ideal choice for soft jazz ensembles, such as the piano trio of Billy Tailor. I never saw him play as heavily as Mongo (but Mongo was extreme). Anyway, he also played descargas with Bebo Valdés in Cuba during the 1950's. Maybe somebody on this forum can tell us more.
Cándido is known for developing and propagating the double conga-, and later triple or quadruple to multi-drum sets.
What Cándido does here is superimposing an almost straight-eighths feel over a swing feel. The swing feel in Jazz is often explained as triplet-based, which is nothing but the closest approximation - within a certain tempo range. Anyway, this again is an archaic style. Chano Pozo had done it, too. You
can do it, and it is common in other musical genres as well, but I don't find it ideal. Also, playing the martillo in swing means to emphasize counts 1 and 3 against the standard 2-and-4 feel in jazz. It fits better than I thought, but again, I wouldn't even get the idea to try that. I'm a jazz drummer as well as a percussionist, and if I was the drummer, I wouldn't want to hear that from the percussionist. Clearly, Bobby Sanabria has a very special relationship with Cándido; I think he admires everything Cándido does.
Expecting the shitstorm
,
Thomas