Joseph "Pepe" Danza

LESSONS

Candombe

Uruguay is a very small country, with a population of approximately 3 million and one major city, Montevideo. It is situated in the Atlantic coast of South America, south of Brazil. Despite its size, Uruguay has a very strong musical identity, and Candombe is it’s most important voice. To this day the experts can’t agree on the original meaning of the word, but one thing is for sure: to us Uruguayans, Candombe represents one of the most essential aspects of our national identity.
The Charruas where the First Nations peoples living in that area. They were nomadic warriors without, from a European point of view, much of a “culture”. The effects of the colonization on the Charruas was devastating and they all but disappeared, decimated by war and diseases purposely inflicted on them “en masse”.
Starting mid eighteenth century, the slave trade was the principal source of work force in the Rio de la Plata area. They were brought from countless parts of Africa along with their different traditions, rituals and music. These traditions blended and transformed over the centuries to create a very unique manifestation. The particular drums on which we play Candombe, today called “tamboriles”, are only found in Uruguay. Over time the tamboriles stopped being solely the instrument of the black culture and became the national instrument of the country. Even so, some “white” groups used to paint their faces with burnt cork so they would “look” black. While the ratio of black people has diminished greatly over the years, there is a special respect given to the older black players that have become the teachers and inspiration for a whole new generation. Nowadays there are many schools of Candombe spread around Montevideo and a great deal of interest from the young people. There is a new found pride in the deep African roots of our culture.
Candombe has been fused with Jazz, Rock, Classical and various forms of popular music, giving all of these forms a truly Uruguayan stamp.
As in many of the Afro traditions of South America based on sacred forms, Candombe is played by three drums. The unusual aspect is that in Candombe it is the middle drum who improvises more freely and leads the group dynamic.

The drums, or Tamboriles, are called:
Piano - the biggest and lowest sounding drum
Chico - the smallest and higher sounding drum
Repique - the middle sized drum that does the soloing (repique means roll).
A “cuerda de tamboriles”, or group of drums, can have as many of each as their style and membership dictate. In fact, different neighborhoods of Montevideo have their own tradition and sound, with more or less of any given size of drum, different variations of the patterns, and variations in speed. A common number of drummers is twenty to sixty.
The Tamboril is a “marching” instrument, and therefore slung over the right shoulder (for right handed players) and played on the left side of the body. The left hand plays bare and the right hand holds a stick, which in the case of the Piano is about the size of a Japanese Taiko stick. The tamboriles are also played sitting and without sticks sometimes, when there are only three drummers or less.
Candombe is based on the 3-2 clave. The clave rhythm and variations are played sometimes on the side of the drum with the stick. This is called “madera” (wood). However, the clave is mostly unplayed, but absolutely internalized by the players. It is the key to “feeling” the flow of the rhythm (in fact the word clave means key, or clue), and your place in it. Candombe is a most complex rhythm where absolutely none of the accentuated beats falls on the downbeat, making it very hard for the untrained ear to tell where the “one” is.