Conga drums are an integral a part of most Latin American music. In North America, everybody has heard of a conga line and unfortunately, the majority of us have already been forced to join 1 at a single point or an additional, usually throughout a wedding reception. But the music in the conga is far too diverse to become pigeonholed as wedding reception music. These instruments are employed not merely in genres like salsa and rumba, but in Afro-Caribbean religious music too. Conga drums are a very essential facet of life in South America.
The bodies of conga drums are “staved,” or made of several strips of wood or fiberglass, equivalent to the construction of a barrel. Probabilities are that the ancestors of contemporary congas were, in fact, created from salvaged barrels. The drum heads are of rawhide or synthetic materials and are screw-tensioned. The height from the typical conga drum is about 3 feet, as well as the instruments are usually played in sets of two to four. They can be played from either a sitting or standing position, although for the latter, the drums should be mounted on a rack. An artist who plays conga is called a “conguero.”
Although the typical height of a conga drum is about three feet, there is truly enough size variation to warrant different names for different sized drums. Nonetheless, there is certainly some confusion more than these names. A single source maintains that the drums are known as, in order of largest to smallest, the “tumba,” the “conga,” the “quinto,” the “requinto” and also the “Ricardo,” the final being named for Desi Arnaz’s character of Ricky Ricardo on “I Really like Lucy.”
An additional supply calls the largest the “tumba,” but refers to the smallest as the “nino” and offers no names for the middle sizes. Nevertheless other names include the “segundo” and also the “supertumba.” Clearly, there is certainly no standardized set of names. Even the term “Online Conga Lessons drum” can at times be confusing. Although some professionals sustain “conga” might be used in both English and Spanish, other individuals aver that it should be employed only in English and that “tumbadoras” ought to be utilized in Spanish. All and all, it can be fairly bewildering.
But there is certainly nothing confusing about the rhythms from the conga drums. To produce these rhythms, congueros use 5 simple tones and strategies: 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 using a distinct pitch produced by striking four fingers near the rim in the head. The muffled tone is like the open tone, but the fingers are held against the head to muffle the sound. The bass tone is made by striking the head with the complete palm in the hand. The slap method produces a popping sound, as well as the touch, again because the name implies, is actually a method of barely touching the fingers or the heel of the hand towards the drum head. A final approach exists in which the conguero makes use of his elbow to apply stress to different components of the head. This can be not a traditional method, nevertheless it is typically employed in modern salsa and rumba.
As pointed out, the character of Ricky Ricardo helped popularize the conga, although the instrument he played around the show was really a lot more equivalent to the Cuban “boku,” an additional type of drum. The music in the conga remains well-known today, in element as a result of existing popularity of Latin music and Latin ballroom dances.