Songo Conguero (Part Two) - The Flows Of Left And Right

Two mince pies later and I was back at my desk.

Happily playing away to Los Van Van with my new toy, the properly located open tone had a transformative effect on my songo marchas: there was, all of a sudden, a relaxed yet powerful push in every other rhythmic space between the double open tones. But still, things didn't seem as they should be; there was a 'hard point' somewhere in my playing which was giving my songo the hiccups. This had to mean that I wasn't yet privileged with the full story despite the rephrasing - something was missing.

Fortified with plenty of currant-and-pastry-laden calories, I ventured out in search of the known unknown. Taking stock, I had:

• a basic marcha whose double-open tones were played with the dominant hand. It was capable of indicating clave orientation with an open tone, played with the dominant hand;
• a basic marcha whose second of the double-open tones was played with the non-dominant hand, which had no variations indicating clave orientation.
  

It's pretty obvious that a non-dominant open tone variation indicating the rumba clave 3-side should exist; despite no mention of its existence in literature I'd encountered. That's not a challenge. I made one up with the right phrasing and feel inside a minute and proceeded to naturalise it. However the Pandora's Box of permutation analysis also indicates the possibility of these marchas:

• second of double-opens non-dominant, clave orientation open tone with dominant; and
  
• second of double-opens dominant, clave orientation open tone with non-dominant.

Hoping that what I had was enough and that the last two theoretical permutations could wait for another day, I chickened out and went on to the combination analysis. Clearly, the basic marchas fall into two groups: one with the clave-orienting open tone being played using the dominant hand, the other with the non-dominant. Four simple combinations are possible [cis and trans are terms commonly used in organic chemistry to describe molecular structure]:

1. cis dominant: dominant 2-side, dominant 3-side;
2. cis non-dominant: non-dominant 2-side, non-dominant 3-side;
3. trans one: dominant 2-side, non-dominant 3-side; and
4. trans two: non-dominant 2-side, dominant 3-side.
   

All changes in the trans combinations occur at the beginning of the African cycle i.e. the double-opens.

I played them all and very soon they all merged seamlessly as one. It was a fabulous feeling to be drumming fluidly into to the music ...the ebb and flow of strokes between left and right was reminiscent of my dancing-jive days at the time when I was starting to master combination-building. Stress-testing what I had with the addition of more complex variations; the results, though imperfect through want of more practice, proved that the songo foundation could cope with everything I could lob at it: from breaks to songo con marcha to other pedals (rhythm families). Outlines of the groups to which the many variations belonged started to become discernible...

On Christmas day, my Songo shed its chains.

Loo Yen