Bongo History - Ten Bongo Facts

What's the origin... when, where... history and evolution of this instrument.

Postby Berimbau » Sun Apr 02, 2006 5:39 am

Dear Friends,
To get this party started I've bootlegged one of my old posts from Nolan Warden's site. Thanks to Nolan! Here I revisit the "common wisdom" of the Abakua/bongo connection, which I find almost completely ahistorical. Any comments or dissenting opinions will be gratefully recieved here.

1.) The bongo was invented in Cuba in the last 100 years or so.
2.) Although they were invented in Cuba, the bongo clearly are derived from African technologies extant in Cuba.
3.) The term "bongo" is not necessarily derived from the Abakua term bonko. The term bongo is also found in a number of Bantu languages and was possibly a part of the shared pan-African lexicon of Afro-Cuban slaves known as bozal.
4.) Although there are some organological similarities between the bongo and the smaller Abakua drums, divergence would be a better descriptor here. One important diagnostic marker for evaluating the African antecedants of Diasporan drums are their tuning apparatus. The Abakua drums employ a typical rope and wooden wedge system that bongos never did. The earliest bongo featured a Kongolese style tacked head, then later on modern metal hardware was adopted. In this manner, these drums couldn't be more different.
5.) At least some of the original bongo were square in shape, quite unlike any of the Abakua drums.
6.) Here is where some of the confusion concerning the bongo's history may have started. In early bongo technique, some players used the glissando
technique quite liberally, sliding a wet finger across the hembra to produce a moaning sound. This sound reminded many Cubans of the sacred Abakua ekue, and apparently some Abakua members objected to it's use in public secular performances. But the ekue is strictly a friction drum and the technique to
produce its sound is totally different. To sound the ekue, a thin stick is held upright against the drum's vellum in one hand while the other hand rubs up and down the stick. Because one of the bongo's sound reminded Cubans of an Abakua drum, perhaps a kind of false association was then assumed.
7.) Still another Afro-Cuban friction drum is the kinfuiti. It is derived from Kongolese models which are nearly identical in their playing techniques and various organological traits. For some reason, no one has compared the bongo to this drum, which is perhaps just as well. They are also unrelated! The singular wet finger technique used by the old bongoseras to achieve glissando is an ancient hand drumming technique that dates at least to Summerian culture where it was employed on frame drums.
8.) The bongo is traditionally played while held between the thighs using both hands and fingers to percuss the heads. The smaller abakua drums are held in one arm and played with the one free hand. The Abakua eribo is not intended to be played at all but is intended to be strictly ceremonial and thus silent! Quite different from the playing techniques employed by the
bongosero.
9.) Is the bongo then derived from the twin clay drums played in Morroco? Although a few have suggested it, I also doubt this. The slave trade to Cuba targeted a number of African peoples but nobody from this far North, although Mailian slaves were taken TO Morroco. Can we then rule out secondary proliferation via the Moorish invasion of Spain? I find no evidence that such an instrument entering Spain then found its way to the
Caribbean with Spanish migrants. Twin drums producing a high tone and a low tone are also a part of the ancient world and have appeared here and there, now and again. Far more likely models for the development of the bongo in turn of the century Cuba would be timbales or tympani.
10.) The bongo was produced at a unique time in Western history when African and European musical values really coalesced in the cultures of free born African-Americans. Like the development of the slide guitar in Blues, the bongo finds its origins in both the older folklore of the slaves and the
emerging explosion of urban popular music.


Saludos,



Berimbau
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Postby zaragemca » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:51 pm

Saludos,Berimbau,the Bongos went to the same transition of the Congas,from being a single instrument, to the incorporation of the second one with different diameter,and from the african/rope system,to the tags,and later to the Rod Tuning System which was used in the Timbales,but with some modification for the Bongos,and from the Carabalies' rituals,to the Sextetos,and later to the Conjutos.Dr.zaragemca



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Postby Isaac » Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:02 am

Mounting a Bongo Skin at JCR - video clip - Apr. 20

Dear friends,
Caly Rivera (Mr. JCR) was just featured on
NY1, a local cable news channel.
It was shot this past saturday afternoon
at his workshop. They shot 1.5 hrs!
but will only run this little clip.

Caly is handling a Hembra
with a freshly mounted wet skin.

~ ISAAC ~
funkytradition@yahoo.com

Here's the link:

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/Living/home.jsp
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Postby Berimbau » Thu Apr 20, 2006 12:49 pm

I don't know about you, Issac! I don't think you should post a video of someone who "handles a Hembra with a freshly mounted wet skin" on the CongaForum. Isn't that considered porn by the Bush administration?


lol,




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Postby Isaac » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:24 pm

Yeah ! I was laughing even as I typed it, wondering
who'd pick up on that.
I should have thought of "bush" !

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Postby mcraghead » Thu Jun 22, 2006 2:55 am

Isaac wrote:Yeah ! I was laughing even as I typed it, wondering
who'd pick up on that.
I should have thought of "bush" !

Isaac

Your minds are in the gutter - Now get off of me! I was here first.





LOL!!! For those of you that are slow (or maybe the joke is just weak), I'm alluding to the fact that my mind is much dirtier than that and I've been in the gutter a long time. Oh well - I thought it was funny. :D
Michael K. Craghead

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Postby davidpenalosa » Sun Jun 25, 2006 7:03 am

I just read this thread. Here's my tardy comments:

The bongo and marimbula come from the early son prototype changui. The changui was born in the eastern end of the island called the Oriente, where there is a strong Haitaino musical influence. The marimbula is of Congolese origin. Cuban folklorists have made the case that the bongo drum language came from the lead drum of tumba Francesa (Haitian-Congolese drums w/ African/French dance). Even a casual comparative listening gives this claim credence.

The glissando technique employed in early bongo playing may very well be a Hatiano influence. Voodu drumming uses the glissando technique.

Abakua is strong on the western end of the island, in the provinces of Havana and Matanzas. It influenced rumba but not son.
-David
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Postby Berimbau » Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:40 pm

It is always a breath of fresh air when David posts one of his thoughtful observations. Armed with Occam's razor, he wields it like a machete to cut through the thick jungle of cultural assumptions. Touche!!
Now I had not heard the tumba Francesa twist, but this does make HISTORICAL sense, much more so than the far distant and imaginative Moroccan connections suggested by some. Again having lost my library and much of my original research material, I find myself at quite a disadvantage. However, I do recall this interesting chestnut from Harold Courlander's "Musical Instruments of Haiti" in the Musical Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Jul., 1941) , pp. 371-383;

"Twin drums which are hung over the knee go by the name marassas, which is Creole (Haitian) for twins. They are sometimes of wood...."

Unfortunately, that was all I could recover electronically, and will have to wait fro the University Music Library to reopen to uncover just how old this tradition might be in Haiti, I just don't know. Although these might yet prove to be an antecedant to the Cuban bongo, for right now, the jury is still out. The term marassa means twins in Haitian Creole.
Now here is yet another early notice of perhaps some signifigance from Barnet's "Biography of a Runaway Slave," here Esteban Montejo's memories of late 19th century Cuba include this interesting passage on the Fiesta of San Juan in Calabazar;

"The tumbandera was another popular dance....The tumbandera resembled the rumba. Very lively. A man and a woman always danced it together. They played two little drums similar to the tumbadoras. But they were smaller. And the maracas. You could dance it in the street or in the Societies of Color" (Barnet 1994:74).

Most immeadiately striking are Montejo's assertion that the "two little drums" were "similar" to the tumbadoras, and that the dance "resembled the rumba." Succinct, but none the less most tantalizing. To this I must add that Calabazar is just due South of Havana in the Western end of the island! Obviously we have our work cut out for us, but I am still inclined to agree that David's post on the changui makes the most sense from a historical, musical, and georgraphical perspective.


Saludos,



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Postby congastu » Sun Jun 25, 2006 5:05 pm

First off, Ive really enjoyed following this and other recent debates on the history of cuban music. Im full of respect for the depth and breadth of knowledge in the posts, especially david and berimbau and would be interested in feedback on a theory, or feeling ive had in my head for sometime.
Many senegalese musicians, and in particular those of Djolof descent [as opposed to their traditional rivals, the mandinka whose malian ancestors gave us the forerunners to the blues] feel that cuban music, specifically the son forms, are derived from their own musical traditions.
I saw Cheikh Lo perform the other night, and he seamlessly fused modern mbalax sounds with cuban son. The interplay between cheikh on timbales and the sabar player was particularly resonant... maybe it was just the musicianship but one really felt a relationship between the two styles of drumming themselves.
Senegambian bands such as orchestra baobab, super etoile, ifang bondi, etc have played son for time adapting it in the same way that congolese musicians reclaimed rumba [although admittedly this is quite different to the cuban sensibility of how to play rumba!].
Now, while the mandinka, despite giving us the djembe, sangban, kenkeni etc, have never given the drums great credence [mandinka griots preferring stringed instruments such as the kora] the djolof griots DO play drums and in the rhythms of the sabar have created perhaps the most sophisticated of all west african forms. The Djolof [in relation to this topic] are FRENCH SPEAKING MUSLIMS for the most part so theres a certain parallel with theories on the arrival of bongos, son etc to cuba. Interestingly Djolof musicians talk about SON [not rumba, or bembe or abakua etc which quite rightly are accredited to slaves from nigeria or the congo] in the same way the late great Ali Farka Toure talked of the blues, ie, surely its Malian.
Im not saying son is senegalese, i cant prove this at all, but a lot of my childhood was spent in senegambia or with senegambian musicians and when i hear traditional son, it makes me think of them because the FEEL, although maybe not the technique is so similar, and its not the same when i hear rumba, bembe or carnaval forms.
Im happy for all this to be disproved, but maybe it adds someting to the ponderings on the role of muslims or french speaking africans in the New World. At the least, its just a chance to say thankyou to a part of Africa that embraced cuba and let that acceptance create beautiful music in its own right.
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Postby Berimbau » Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:22 pm

Dear Congastu,
You are correct in your assertion that Muslim slaves from the Western Sudanic belt played a most important role in the culture and technology of the United States. Rice cultivation, quite unknown in France and England, was really introduced into the thirteen colonies by slaves from this part of Africa. Rice provided
much of the nutrition in the colonial diet. A good general read in this area is "Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century" by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall. Of course Kubik's "Africa and the Blues" is the best work so far dealing with the various African influences in the historical development of African-American music. When I read at the S.E.M. conference in 1995, Charlotte J. Frisbie also delivered a paper on the same panel on regarding music, rice cultivation, and slaves from the Western Sudanic belt. However, I don't know if she's published it yet.
So are there any Senegalese influences in Cuban son? I don't think so, and not just because they were a decided minority in the slave population of Cuba. Other than the most basic pan-African generalities, I find the musical values of traditional Senegalese music to be greatly different from those of any Afro-Cuban genre. Look to Kongo/Angola, Nigeria, and Dahomey/Haiti for the major sources of Afro-Cuban music.
In fact I find that the opposite to be true, and that the popular (and NOT the traditional) music of Senegal has been mightily influenced by Afro-Cuban sources. This has been true for at least 30 years or more, and not just in Senegal! The impact of Cuban musical values throughout much of Africa is asstounding. Now if the young generation of Senegalese musicians today wish to claim that the musical values of son, rumba, or timba are congruent with their own, I have no doubt that they are, for that is precisely what they have grown up with!
The myopic viewpoint of the "roots and retentions" school of African music that focuses exclusively on a one-way journey of cultures into the New World is now obsolete. Now if some young colleague told me that she/he had danced all night to Sengalese Reggaeton in a Dakar disco, I wouldn't be in the least surprised. The past fifty years of African musical history has been marked by the coming back to Africa of reggae, rap, soul, samba, gospel, jazz, rock, and calypso. No doubt that this type of cultural feedback will continue for some time into the future. I still maintain that son was developed in Cuba from the African and European sources that are cited in most of the very reliable studies, be it Furre, Ortiz, Cabrera, or Sublette.



Saludos,



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Postby davidpenalosa » Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:44 am

Berimbau wrote:the popular (and NOT the traditional) music of Senegal has been mightily influenced by Afro-Cuban sources. This has been true for at least 30 years or more, and not just in Senegal! The impact of Cuban musical values throughout much of Africa is asstounding.

Yes, the music traveled from Cuba to Senegal, not Senegal to Cuba. The effect of the Cuban son on African popular music is indeed phenomenal. It's not surprising though. I believe that the genre of son (in its most general and inclusive sense) is the most seamless synthesis of European harmony and African rhythm. Because of the advent of the phonograph and radio, the son (under the misnomer "rhumba") traveled world-wide. Afro-pop got its start when African bands did son covers. Senegalese bands, Nigerian ju ju groups and Congolese "rumba" (actualy son) bands played Cuban percussion instruments: congas, bongos, timbales, maracas and claves.

John Storm Roberts has a great CD called "Afro-Cuban Comes Home" where you can hear historical recordings that tell this story. There's a recording of Aragon doing a piece, followed by African's playing the same song, singing Spanish phonetically. Gradually, the African groups began incoporating more and more of their own indeginous musical elements. The path from Congolese "rumba" to soukous is facinating.

Roberts is not always the most precise researcher, but those music examples on "Afro-Cuban Comes Home" are priceless.
-David




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Postby davidpenalosa » Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:44 am

There's some footage of changüí at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N53o9rFn0EU
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxbueClXzLU

You can see bongo, tres and marimbula.
-David
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Postby JohnnyConga » Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:41 pm

I love watching these cats play "bongo del monte"....unique approach and style....very different....and very tasty, too!..."JC" Johnny Conga....
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Postby ralph » Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:43 pm

davidpenalosa wrote:I just read this thread. Here's my tardy comments:

The bongo and marimbula come from the early son prototype changui. The changui was born in the eastern end of the island called the Oriente, where there is a strong Haitaino musical influence. The marimbula is of Congolese origin. Cuban folklorists have made the case that the bongo drum language came from the lead drum of tumba Francesa (Haitian-Congolese drums w/ African/French dance). Even a casual comparative listening gives this claim credence.

The glissando technique employed in early bongo playing may very well be a Hatiano influence. Voodu drumming uses the glissando technique.

Abakua is strong on the western end of the island, in the provinces of Havana and Matanzas. It influenced rumba but not son.
-David

one can rarely ever define what exclusively influences an instruments creation and or evolution etc...i do like you assertion david, as by listening to both musics, and noting the location in which these two forms (tumba francesa and changui) have developed, one can compare tumba francesa with quite possibilty being the precursor of the bongo de monte...both musics having strong haitian influences...
I think Ben Lapidus who has researched the question, stated pretty much the same...

Ralph




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Postby davidpenalosa » Tue Sep 19, 2006 9:49 pm

ralph wrote:...i do like you assertion david, as by listening to both musics, and noting the location in which these two forms (tumba francesa and changui) have developed, one can compare tumba francesa with quite possibilty being the precursor of the bongo de monte...both musics having strong haitian influences...

Hey Ralph,
From the opposite end of the island, the connection between bonkó and quinto seems evern more apparent.
-David
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