The Possibility of Dialogue (Tumbadora Session Two)

Two Solares participants and I met up for dinner and chat; which morphed into an impromptu tumbadora percussion workshop shortly after dessert was downed. It was I who suggested it, given that there was an opportunity to explore the 'non-moderno' (i.e. non one-person) version of the basic conga rhythm. All three of us were keen: two friends keen to lay hands on the drums, and I to explore more how to articulate the relevance of percussion to dancers.

Prelude
We went over how to set up to play congas; then the necessary basic strokes of open tones, heel tones, toe tones; and the heel-toe marcha.

The first hurdle was in how to properly co-ordinate two drummers, each playing a complementary part of a whole rhythm, without bringing in the extra complexity of clave beforehand. I elected to introduce the entire rhythm as vocalisation, to a regular pulse meter tapped out by the ball-of-foot.

Vocalisation
The sung rhythm was "gung-gung-fru-ku-gung-gung-fru-ku-" where:

• "gung" is the open tone, corresponding to beats 4, 4+, 2, 2+ respectively;
• "fru" is the heel tone, corresponding to beats 1, 3 respectively; and
• "ku" is the toe tone, corresponding to beats 1+, 3+ respectively.

Taps of the ball-of-foot synchronised with each "fru". The "fru" syllable was used instead of "tu" because it is non-plosive.

Playing
One person was designated to play the open tones, the other the marcha. The drummer of the open tones began first as a 'pregón' or 'caller', followed by the marcha drummer as 'coro' or 'respondent', creating dialogue. Once the two-person rhythm was fully engaged, the vocalisation was silenced. The foot taps acted as a synchronising master timeline. These roles would be reversed so that each participant had an equal amount of time playing the two roles.

Handedness
Each drummer was asked to cycle through the practice using dominant and non-dominant hands, and to assess the quality of each side's sonority, musical timing, and expression. As is typical, both were surprised to find their non-dominant sides more musical.

Co-operation
In keeping with the principle of co-operative musicianship common to African drumming, the tumbao was split into roles such that both were essential to form the whole. The divide was made according to tonal function: obviously audible tones which project the personality of the rhythm, and subtle near-inaudible tones which are essential to the drummer for stability and texture.

Quantitative factors, such as the loudness of tone (volume), and qualitative factors, such as abrupt accusative tones (timbre) were also pointed out when they occurred.

Music
Low-mid tempo son montuno music was selected as the performative context.

Conclusion
With both participants being new to the instrument and to co-operative drumming, the objective of this session was to introduce them to the idea of how congas were drummed with two people, to develop the skill of listening to each other and their selves simultaneously, and to contextualise the vocalisations we've been using in solares in triggering movement response

We completed the session some three hours later, satisfied that a substantial foundation had been laid.

Loo Yeo

"pak"

True to my decision for a positive move to rhythm, I turned up to Solares armed with a learning game plan, a bagful of hand percussion, a compact conga, and a cajón. This approach to content - the meanings of rhythms to dancers - was new to Solares and although I had a direction, I couldn't anticipate the response nor outcomes, so I was loaded for bear.

There were two possible routes to take:

1. picking one timeline class and investigating-developing it to its fullest extent in the time available, or
2. skimming through the four timeline classes to give an overall feel for the rhythm capsule in ensemble.

I wouldn't know which route until I assessed Solares' participants response to the first exercise, which was designed as an indicator.

Background
Right from Solares' inception, the timing mechanism used has been based on the non-verbal vocalisation of the tumbao moderno's open tones "gung-gung" (beats 4 and 4+) either in full context of the music, synchronised to the actual open tones of the tumbao moderno played on congas by yours truly, or as a standalone rhythmic cue/timekeeper.

Backbeat Timeline: Tumbao Moderno rhythm
The lowest-hanging fruit was to explore the timeline in which the long-established "gung-gung" was a component - the backbeat* timeline. To put this more expressly, the tumbao moderno rhythm is an example of a backbeat timeline. To complete the timeline, all that was needed was the additional vocalisation "pak" on the European count of beat 2. Hence the vocalisation would be:

"gung-gung (4,4+), ... , pak (2), ..., gung-gung (4,4+), ... , pak (2), ..., " repeated

Exercise One
The Caribbean sway basic was used as the embodiment (i.e. dance) context.

1. "gung-gung" vocalisation followed by three steps, to yield:
   "gung-gung", step, step, step.
2. Then add the "pak" vocalisation synchronous with the second step:
   "gung-gung", step, "pak"step, step.

Results
All participants executed part 1 easily. But when it came to adding the "pak" vocalisation synchronous with their second step, they encountered difficulty. It took most of the workshop as learning time (with remedial instruction) to achieve independently reproducible practice. By default, Route 1 (above) became the course.

Participants' independence and reproducibility of practice was verified through the contrasting activity of incorporating the vocalisation in a simple rueda de casino comprising just basic guapea timesteps and dame partner changes.

Discussion
I believe two factors contributed to the unexpected initial lack of success.

1. The "gung-gung" had been interpreted as a component of the embodiment timeline, NOT as belonging to a separate timeline.
This meant that participants were only tracking one simple timeline. The addition of the "pak" forced the excision of "gung-gung" from the embodiment timeline into its proper backbeat timeline. Participants now had to track two timelines: the vocalised backbeat timeline and the stepped embodiment timeline. All-of-a-sudden, cognitive overhead had more than doubled since two timelines had to be maintained AND they had to be synchronised and merged to create a composite timeline**.

2. The "gung-gung" had been interpreted as a cue anticipating the beginning of the timeline NOT as the beginning itself.
The result, given that the human brain perceives regular meter as alternating strong and weak beats beginning with the strong***, was that the first and third steps coincided with the neurologically strong beats; the second step plus "pak", and the "gung-gung" fell on the neurologically weak beats.

Future Study
Participants' ability to track two separate timelines must continue to develop. This would allow for their merger to form a composite timeline yielding greater rhythmic stability; and an aesthetic investigation into what happens when a rhythm is allowed to modulate another rhythm.

A shift in the perceived start of the rhythmic timeline: from the first step to the "gung-gung" i.e. from the European to the African. To achieve success, "gung-gung" must be understood as important beats in their own right, not simply as cues to the (perceptually) more "important" beat of the first dance step. I think it likely that an interchanging dance-percussion ensemble format will be evaluated for its suitability.

Yeo Loo Yen

Notes
*The online definitions of the backbeat expose the limitations of the internet as a web resource. For example, Wikipedia's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(music)#Backbeat) point to its origin as being in rock music, and FreeDictionary's (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/backbeat) limiting it as a characteristic of rock music. Neither mention its pre-existence in, for example, Senegambian music, nor trace how it came to be in rock music (see 'The Latin Tinge' by John Storm Roberts).

**"Paillard-Fraisse hypothesis" or "code-generation hypothesis" where dynamic stability of a rhythm is achieved through the establishment of a master time code via multi-rhythmic encoding. In:
Volman, M.J.M., and Geuze, R.H. (2000). Temporal stability of rhythmic tapping “on” and “off the beat”: A developmental study. Psychological Research Vol.63, pp.62-69.

***Brochard, R., Abecasis, D., Potter, D., Ragot, R., and Drake, C. (2003). The “TickTock” of Our Internal Clock: Direct Brain Evidence of Subjective Accents in Isochronous Sequences. Psychological Science Vol.14 No.4 pp.362-366.

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

What Does A Dancer Need To Know About Percussion?

That's the question that's been burning since a specific Solares participant enthusiastically indicated that he wanted to know more about Afro-Cuban and African phrasing via percussion. But it's a 'what' question, not a 'why' question, which in the grand scheme of question hierarchy: Why > What > How, tells me I need to be thinking bigger picture.

So instead of asking "what does a dancer need to know about percussion?" I should be asking questions in that order, beginning with...

Why does a dancer need to know about percussion?
The writer Juan Luis Borges said, “art is fire plus algebra”. Passion plus skill. Dancers are already percussionists, it's just that most of them don't know it. Learning about percussion is an additional route to connecting a person's creative side with his or her physical manipulation side. It creates a more profound melding of the embodiment activity (dance) with music, building a complete synchronous sensory experience - tactile, aural and visual.

What does a dancer need to know about percussion?
I've been to a number of percussion workshops (usually part of congresses) where the deliverers described the rhythms and got the attendees to dance to them, But all of these were presented from the drummers perspective: there was no "this is what's important to you as a dancer, and this is how you use it". Hell, I've been guilty of doing the same before!

"What are the sounds?" and most crucially, "what to do they mean to a dancer?" must be the questions at the heart of adventure.

How does a dancer need to know about percussion?
Okay, the structure of the question makes it sound contrived, for good reason so as to simulate closer examination. The 'how' determines the realisation of the why and the what. How the learning experience is shaped affects the likelihood of the adventurer's realisation of meaning, and how much that meaning is valued.

On the basis of this, I have now to design a conga adventure programme for the hands of a dancer, that he or she may be enriched, and knowing so, through Afro-Cubanisation.

Yeo Loo Yen