A THOUSAND RAWHIDE DIAPHRAGMS' LINER NOTES - A MANIFESTO IN PROGRESS

​

As a percussionist, congas are the single instrument I have spent most time playing, and whereas this fact in itself certainly doesn’t make me a player of excellence, it has all the same generated a symbiotic bond with this instrument, a sense of self-identification not dissimilar to what I have with any of my limbs, or my vocal apparatus. This, coupled with the incidentally symbolic fact that congas are played with bare hands, makes conga playing one of the most intimate acts of my life. The drum has become not so much of an “extension” of my body, as more like a prosthesis, a thing designed to replace something that was always meant to be there in the first place.

There’s something about the congas’ weight, size, the barrel-shaped body, the wood, the thick skin and their particular range of frequencies, that was resonating with me even before I could lay hands on them, as a young man - and to this day makes my spine, chest and brain respond like a tuning fork.

 

After spending the entirety of the nineties - and a good part of the eighties - playing salsa, Afro-Cuban secular and sacred music, funk and all the groove-based genres where conga drums legitimately dwell and belong, with the new century I gradually started experimenting with congas in less trodden environments - like free-form improvisation, late XX century composition, contemporary dance, spoken word and electronic music. Liberating congas from their time-keeping obligations led me to experiment with new sounds and to explore structural strategies different than those suggested by the canonical repertoire of the instrument - yet without ever losing touch with its idiomatic legacy, its raison d'être in terms of aesthetics.

 

The music on this album is a synthesis (and a consolidation) of those experiences. While working on it, my intention was that of creating "music for congas" in the widest and less restrictive sense. My only self-imposed limitations were that no instrument other than congas can be used, and that nothing else than bare hands should be employed to play them. No “preparations” with supplementary material were allowed either, nor electronic sound manipulations. Within these given restrictions, any way of creating music was allowed.

 

Some pieces have traceable links to the traditional repertoire, others make use of wholly orthodox sonorities but apply compositional strategies not usually associated with the instrument. Some others make a significant use of extended techniques - or isolate and investigate very narrow and specific areas of its conventional sound palette. I have also experimented with some more adventurous recording methods, often in unusually sounding spaces, outdoors and indoors; for these pieces I have treasured and re-examined the experiences made years ago during the recording of the album In Thunder Rise with Isambard Khroustaliov, who was also instrumental in the making of these particular tracks.

 

Despite their inherently universal nature, congas are more often than not associated with, and relegated to, particular types of music and specific “ethnic” connotations; and at their most far-reaching they remain confined to the roles of either a time-keeping instrument, or that of a flashy soloist. 

 

The last thirty years have seen a formidable evolution in congas technique, thanks to the seminal examples of Changuito, Giovanni Hidalgo and the legacy that followed in their steps. Yet, not much has been added in terms of content during the same period. It is my opinion that congas have a lot of potential still in want of being explored, both in the realm of composition and improvisation, but also in their basic lexicon. I like to think of this album as a collection of seeds, bound to grow in many different and unexpected directions. The best reward for me would be to know that this small effort of mine has been a source of inspiration for other conga players, instigating them to venture into new areas that I haven’t even imagined myself.

 

Another implicit ambition of this work is that it would somehow engender the curiosity of creators of composed music, a realm in which congas have hardly ever been taken into consideration as an instrument worthy of attention.

With this in mind, I have developed a new system of notation, simplified and leaner than the various systems currently in use, yet allowing for unlimited degrees of complexity of details and articulation.