A Dancer's Approach To The Tumbadoras (Tumbadora Session One)

I learned to play the tumbadoras or congas descriptively. At that time, the resources available presented the information as: this is how you set up, these are the tones, these are the rhythms. By learning the rhythms as set patterns (they were, in fact, routines) it took a lot of effort to liberate myself from them afterwards. Experience told me that as a percussionist-dancer, I also needed to know what the tones meant in the various positions of the rhythm stream; and what where the precursor proto-rhythms which combined to give rise to the tumbao moderno.

Why? So that I could understand it as a flexible, living, breathing, thing that could be played and played with.

Principles
To learn musical expressions interpretable on the tumbadoras, as a plastic aesthetic driven by a cognitive-emotional approach

Objectives
To develop an appreciation of the history of rhythmic expression, as a context for understanding where the important tones are, why they're important, and subsequently the points of flexibility in rhythm timelines.

Learning Outcomes
The participant would be able to derive the tumbao moderno from first principles.
He or she would be able to explain and demonstrate each step of the derivation.

Further Aims
The dancer would be able to sychronise his or her dance timeline to tumbadora rhythms musically.
The dancer would be polycentrically articulate.
The dancer would be capable of African and European phrasing simultaneously.

So that's how we started this afternoon's one-to-one tumbadora session.

Setup
Seated position. Two drums (requinto and conga). High-pitched drum between the legs controlled by thighs and ankles. Low-pitched drum on the dominant side. Both drums playable with the dominant arm by pivoting, without displacement, at the elbow. Minimising movement improves timing consistency.

Tones and Tone Practice
Open. Heel. Toe. Open slap. Closed slap. Bass.
Marcha: heel-toe alternating sequence played with hand resting on the skin (Cuban style, preferred) compared to hand pivoting above the skin (Colombian style).

All exercises were performed two-person as a dialogue of 'coro-pregón' ['call and response']. All exercises began at the start of the African rhythm cycle (European count of beat 4). One bar phrase. Numbers in curved brackets () correspond to the European beat count.

Exercise One (dialogue total: 1 inter-drummer; 0 intra-drummer)
Drummer A: open tones (4, 4+)
Drummer B: heel (1) toe (1+) [marcha]
Drummer A: open tones (2, 2+)
Drummer B: heel (3) toe (3+) [marcha]
This creates the first 'call and response' dialogue between drummers. Inter-drummer dialogue.

Exercise Two (dialogue total: 1 inter-drummer; 1 intra-drummer)
Drummer A: open tones (4, 4+)
Drummer B: heel (1) toe (1+) [marcha]
Drummer A: open tones (2, 2+)
Drummer B: heel (3) toe (3+) [marcha]
Drummers A&B: foot pulse i.e. tap ball of foot, non-dominant side (1, 3)
Adding the foot pulse synchronises percussionists (drummers and dancers) to the master pulse, and develops bicentricity.
An additional, intra-drummer, dialogue is created in Drummer A between the foot pulse and the open tones.

Exercise Three (dialogue total: 1 inter-drummer; 2 intra-drummer)
Drummer A: open tones (4, 4+)
Drummer B: heel (1) toe (1+) [marcha]
Drummer A: open tone (2)
Drummer B: heel (3) toe (3+) [marcha]
Drummers A&B: foot pulse
Alternation of double open tones with single opens creates another intra-drummer dialogue, again in Drummer A. This adds an audible internal dynamic to the two-player rhythm.

Exercise Four (dialogue total: 1 inter-drummer; 3 intra-drummer)
Drummer A: open tones (4, 4+)
Drummer B: heel (1) toe (1+) [marcha]
Drummer A: open tone (2)
Drummer B: toe (2+) heel (3) toe (3+) [marcha]
Alternation of a two-stroke marcha with a three-stroke marcha creates an intra-drummer dialogue in Drummer B. This adds an (in)audible internal dynamic to the two-player rhythm.

Exercise Five (dialogue total: 1 inter-drummer; 3 intra-drummer)
Drummer A: open tones (4, 4+)
Drummer B: heel (1) toe (1+) [marcha]
Drummer A: slap tones (2)
Drummer B: heel (3) toe (3+) [marcha]
Although there is no increase in dialogue dynamism, the substitution of a slap stoke for the open tone (beat 2) - short impulse instead of long impulse - changes the nature of the dialogues qualitatively.

Exercise Six
Drummer A: open tones (4, 4+)
Drummer A: heel (1) toe (1+) [marcha]
Drummer A: slap tones (2)
Drummer A: heel (3) toe (3+) [marcha]
This is the state of independence. One drummer plays both roles: the reason why the tumbao moderno is 'modern' i.e. the number of drummers have been reduced in response to commercial pressure. To be true to the rhythm's feel, the single drummer must phrase and dialogue as if (s)he were two separate players.

Contrasting Activity

The stability and groove of any tumbao rests on the ability of the inaudible (in full ensemble) marcha of the non-dominant hand. Traditionally, the heel stroke would fall on the whole notes (4,1,2,3) and the toe stroke on the 'and' counts (4+,1+,2+,3+). An exercise for developing a feel for African phrasing involves (to music):

• beginning marcha with toe stroke on count 4+
• ending marcha, after one bar or more, with heel stroke on count 1
• maintaining foot pulse as a constant timeline, even during cessation of the marcha

Total duration of session: two hours.

Loo Yeo