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The Tumbadora (Conga Drum) and Its Tumbao

by Thomas Altmann (08/2013)

Introduction: Short Historical Outline of the Instrument

The conga drum or tumbadorain its current organological phenotype is an instrument of

Cuban origin, developed from the countless long drums of African provenience that have one

single membrane played with bare hands. The direct predecessors in Cuba are probably the

Yuka-, Makuta- and Palo drums (ngoma)of Congolese origin, single-headed Bemb drums,

and the bonk enchemiy from the Abaku battery. These drums were carved out of solid

wood trunks and had relatively thin skin heads tensioned with ploughs that were driven into

the drum shells beneath the drum head.

In the beginning of the 20th century, conical or barrel-shaped drums were constructed forthe first time from wooden staves. They were much lighter in weight and did not have any

ritual association; they were made especially for being carried around with a shoulder strap in

the comparsas congas, the carnival processions of the Congos (Bant) that featured a

Congolese-derived rhythm, known as the ritmo Conga. This rhythm is where the conga drum

(or, in short: conga) got its name from. The skins were nailed onto the shell and had to be

tensioned by heat. If the sun did not provide enough heat, the heads were tuned (tensioned)

near a fire.

Following the use of cajones(wooden crates), the conga drums were also introduced in

the musical styles of Rumba. In traditional Rumba, the conga drums are played in a seated

position. In Rumba, like in the ritmo Conga, traditionally each drummer plays just one single

drum with one specific rhythmic part. In early Rumba the drumheads were still tacked to the

shell, and therefore the skins had to be relatively thin and slack by todays standards.

This did not change until, reportedly, the Vergara brothers in Havana introduced in the

1950s a tuning system probably modeled after the tympani, timbales, and military drums.

These drums were tuned by screwed tension rods. On the conga (drum), these rods were

hook-shaped, pulling down a crown-shaped hoop that put pressure on the "flesh hoop" of the

skin itself. The design is known well enough; it is still used to this day.

Congolese drum Tack-head conga drum Modern conga drum

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It was not until the invention of the screw tensioning system, that thicker (and harder)

skins could be mounted and tuned higher, and with this innovation, modern conga playing

technique finally started to evolve.

Studying the Instrument

My opinion is that, in a nutshell, if you want to study or learn anything about a musical

instrument, you have to tap the typical stylistic or ethnological source; so if you wanted to

learn how to play the conga drum, you should automatically turn to Cuban rhythms and

Cuban music and a Cuban conga technique, just as you should learn march rudiments to

master the snare drum. If you wanted to learn playing the berimbau, you would probably not

look to Japan; you would study the traditional toquesin Brazilian Capoeira. If all you wanted

to do with a conga drum is either to fool around or to develop an independent personal style to

play, thats fine; in this case you would not have to study anything; you would just have to

spend years of direct practice and experience perhaps becoming the next conga genius (or

eventually reinventing the wheel)!

The absolute minimum, rudimentary skill that every percussionist must acquire on the

conga drum is how to produce its diverse sounds and to articulate properly by first being able

to set these sounds apart from each other in combined stroke patterns, and then to eventually

create and control shadings by blending the sounds. The cornerstones of sound differentiation

and articulation on the conga drum are:

1. the open tone;

2. the slap:

a) open slap;

b) closed slap;

c) muffled slap (open or closed);

3. the bass stroke, sometimes referred to as heel sound: mostly closed;

4. the muffled tone or muff;

5. the finger (-tip) stroke, tap, time touch or ghost stroke: This is actually no specific

sound, although with added momentum it can gain a slap-like quality.

As soon as a basic facility in sound technique is acquired, I usually proceed directly to

the practical application in authentic folklore rhythm parts, each performed on one single

drum. Traditionally, folkloric rhythms are played on individual drums (or bells, or any otherpercussion instruments) by each percussionist, together creating polyrhythmic textures.

The ability to play one drum only, as well as some experience in traditional folkloric

(often ritual) percussion music, is fundamental to advanced double, triple or multi-drum

conga set playing in popular, dance-band music, or Latin Jazz. However, some musicians

never make the transition to orchestra work, because just playing the traditional folkloric

styles with energy and taste is rewarding enough to them. Of course, for that you need a

complete percussion ensemble of more or less equally talented players, preferrably in-

corporating singers and dancers, to really set up a striking performance.

Where I live, it often appears to be more promising to find and join a Latin Jazz or dance

band as their only conga drummer. By the way, even in the first Latin orchestras up into the1950s, the conguerosdid not play any more than one conga drum. Later, people like Candido

Camero and Patato Valdz developed double conga drumming from that.

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If you dont intend to dwell too much on a so-called authentic traditional Afro-Cuban,

Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian or African repertory and aspire a free-style musical context,

you should make sure to be rhythmically secure and technically flexible and deliver a good,

clean, recordable sound. In some instances, percussionists who are not so deeply steeped in

any kind of traditional, ethnic or ritual drumming, even prove to be more creative and better

suited for stylistically free situations, because it is often undesirable to establish ethnicreferences in, lets say, a pop music setting, and traditionally trained drummers seem to have a

tendency to lay their heritage on just anybody and anything there is, unaltered, like a cure-all

magical medicine. Sometimes thats smart, sometimes not so. (Use your taste!)

La Marcha, or Standard Conga Tumbao

Nevertheless, no conga player is complete without a rhythm that is almost synonymous

with the instrument itself, in a way that if the percussionist is advised to play conga on a given

tune or musical passage, he is often automatically supposed to play exactly that rhythm. It is a

rhythm played in the Cuban styles of Son, Guaracha, and Mambo. Percussionists often call it

la marcha or el tumbao, although any ostinato figure, especially the bass- and conga

parts that emphasize the beats 4 and/or the and of 2, may be called a tumbao. Tumbao

roughly translates as beat, and the drum that provides that beat is the tumbadora, which in

Cuba is a more common name for the conga drum.

The standard conga ride or tumbaohas one or usually two open tones on beat 4 (plus

the and of 4) and a slap on beat 2, so it is perceived as an up-beat figure, much like the back

beat in North American music. You even have a two-beat oom-pah effect in the tumbao,

because its audible up-beats are metrically anchored by bass strokes on beats 1 and 3. The

bass strokes are less audible in an ensemble that has a bass or even a drum sets bass drum,

but they are there, they are important, and they can be felt. There are conga drummers today

who just play some kind of heel- or palm stroke to hold their rhythm together, withoutproducing any definite sound with it, just like there are timbales players who omit their left

hand for reasons of efficiency.1I think thats sloppy, and it deprives the instrument as well as

its tumbao of its sound property and richness. As far as I am concerned, I dont make any

difference between a heel stroke (or palm stroke, rather) and a bass stroke. Certainly you have

to know what kind of dynamic balance you give to the bass strokes within your tumbao, but

bass strokes are bass strokes, and they are an integral element of the rhythm, period.

It might be important to mention that the open tones are on the up-beat 4 and 4+, while

the slap is on 2, not the other way around. Both 2 and 4 are up-beats, but they are not inter-

changeable! I often heard Jazz drummers mimic a conga rhythm on the drum set, using the

tomtom for the open conga sound and a rim click on the snare drum for the slap, but turningthe tumbao around, in a way that the open tones were on 2 and 2+, while the slap-like rim

click was placed on beat 4. Now by its nature, Jazz involves a free, open, play-what-you-feel

musical concept; so it is always problematic to say that somebody played something wrong.

All we can tell is that, if this drummer had intended to play an authentic Latin conga rhythm,

he definitely missed it. (Open tone on 4!)

The tumbao used in Son groups or Mambo- and Latin Jazz orchestras is obviously

derived from a tumbadorapart in a comparsa conga(Congaparade), which is also known as

the rebajadorapart. (The deep sounding rebajadorais to back up, or reinforce in the lower

register, the high-pitched salidordrum.)

1A similar dispute has been going on for some time regarding the feathered bass drum in straight-ahead jazz

drumming. The late, famous Mel Lewis was an ardent advocate of maintaining the bass drum pulse under the

cymbal ride and, most importantly, under the bass.

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Tumbadora (rebajadora)in the comparsa conga:

This is the basic tumbao played in the street rhythm called Conga. Interestingly, (for

right-handed people) the left hand is on the down-beat, providing bass notes on 1 and 3, while

the right hand accents the up-beats 2 (slap) and 4 (open tone). Conga notation is not yet

standardized; this particular notation, including the sound symbols, is the one that I have used

for more than 20 years. The cross-type notehead (otherwise used either for ghost notes in

wind charts or for cymbals in drum charts) had been a common symbol for the conga slap

back then. I write bass (heel/palm) strokes as notes with small heads on the middle line and

finger strokes as stems without heads (see next page).I saw the late Cuban drummer/singer Angelo Duarte in Hamburg play that same tumbao

in Guarachas and Rumbas in a Son-type band context. Also, when I listen to old recordings of

bands like the Sonora Matancera, whenever they employed a conga drum, it seemed to be

nothing more than this. Occasionally the open tone was doubled to a 4 - 4+ pattern, but thats

about all I can hear. (I was told that initially even in a Guaguanc, the tumbador used to play

this beat, although I havent been able to verify it so far.) So this figure is most probably the

origin and the basis of our standard conga tumbao.

The first Son groups to incorporate the conga drum in addition to the bongos were

reportedly the Septeto La Llave (1934), and later the conjuntoof Arsenio Rodrguez (1936)2.

Arsenios conjuntoplayed a lot of what he called Son Montuno, which was usually slower-paced. Because in slower tempos the quarter notes on the beats alone cannot sufficiently

stabilize the tumbao to create a coherent rhythmic flow, I speculate that congueros like

Arsenios Flix Chocolate Alfonso instinctively filled up the off-beat or eighth-note spaces

with finger strokes in order to tie the beats together. This is presumably how the left-hand

time touches or finger taps became a standard element of the tumbaoor marchaas it is

played today:

or:

2According to Candido Camero in Candido: Legendary Congueroby Bobby Sanabria [LPHighlights in

PercussionVol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1988, Garfield NJ]

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The term time touch, which points to the purpose of securing the time flow, is some-

how misleading, because it suggests that the inserted finger stroke is of minor musical signi-

ficance, or might even be nothing more than a privat affair of the drummer. Sure enough, the

finger stroke is audible. It does have a musical value, and listeners and dancers as well as the

other musicians in the band relate to it. Beginners often underestimate the importance of the

finger strokes, or even the entire left-hand action altogether. Not only must the finger strokesbe exactly in time; at least since the introduction of key tuning and thicker skins, finger

strokes are to be executed with crisp definition and dynamic balance within the tumbao

groove. More than anything else, the left hand defines the swing and the micro-timing that are

determined by the eighth-note sudivisions. The left hand of the conga player has to lock in

with the timbaleros cscara and a set drummers hi-hat. In fact, the finger strokes on the

conga may be regarded as equivalent to the hi-hat in the drum set.

Silencing the left hand only in order to avoid clashing with the rest of the percussion

section usually doesnt make it. The conga drummer has to make his statement and syn-

chronize his part with the other guys. With a strong left hand, a conguerocould easily carry

the whole band just by himself. A conga drummers strong left hand is a virtue reminiscent ofthe left hand in playing stride piano. Only a strong left hand teams well up with the right to

establish that relentless marchaquality of the tumbao.

The Floating Hand

In Cuba, the combination of bass- or palm strokes with finger strokes has led to an

optimized technique known as floating hand, manoteoorpescadito(little fish, alluding to

the movements of a landed fish). As these two stroke techniques are obviously complemen-

tary, the manoteoexploits that fact by executing bass and finger strokes in conjunction with

each other, which is expressed in an efficiently organized motion. This advance did not only

affect the tumbao or marcha of the conga drum, but eventually influenced the entire handdrumming concept.

Over the decades of technical evolution on the instrument, the floating hand has been

developed and perfected to a point where certain hand patterns (palm-tip combinations) are

extremely difficult to analyze and to execute without proper instruction, especially at the

considerable speed that has become possible. The Cuban percussionist Jos Luis Quintana

(Changuito) coined the term la mano secreta(the secret hand) for complex left hand action,

while Puertorican congueroGiovanni Hidalgo (Maenguito) transferred the mano secretato

both hands, effectively applying the double stroke roll and other typical snare drum rudiments

to conga drumming.

In fact, knowledge of the proper hand pattern as well as the technical ability to executethe required pattern without excess effort, is often critical to the rhythms and variations one

wants to play without losing the groove. It is therefore essential for any ambitious conga

student not only to internalize each hand pattern until the motion that results in a given

rhythm becomes muscle memory; with the time, one should also gather a broad repertory of

different hand patterns in order to gain the facility and the flexibility to put forward any

rhythmical idea that can possibly come to ones mind. But this ability has to be built bit by

bit, practicing slowly at first; because if you tried to break speed records right away, you

would not only fail, but also graciously invite unpleasant ailments such as tendonitis.

Always remember to anchor your left-hand manoteoin your bass strokes! Whenever you

feel you are getting caught up in your fingerwork during your practice sessions, go back andcut down to playing the tumbao with your left hand marking the bass notes only, then

building up again from there. I find it helpful to sychronize my bass strokes on beats 1 and 3

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(either with or without added finger strokes) with an imagined campana (cowbell) beat,

because thats exactly where the bongo players big hand-held bell would be.

The standard conga tumbaoalready offers a lot of technical diversity and sound variety,

and even more so when you consider the possible variations. I collected quite a few of these

tumbaovariations that may serve either as exercises, as occasional alterations or as alternative

basic rhythms.

The Swing Tumbao

A slight adjustment of the eighth-note subdivisions makes your tumbaofit a triplet-based

rhythm like the Jazz swing or a Shuffle:

or:

Note that well up into the 1960s the distinction between even eighths and triplet inter-

pretation (swing) was not discussed as such, but was left subject to the feeling of the

respective musician. This becomes evident when listening to the early recordings of Chano

Pozo with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, where Chano plays pretty much straight eighths

against a triplet-oriented swinging drummer and a swinging band. Since these recordings have

become historical, setting up even against triplet interpretation has remained an option, even if

it sounds weird at first.3Most later congueros, however, did adapt themselves to the swing

feel perfectly.

Tumbaos in Other Cuban Styles

Some of the tumbaoexamples in other Cuban styles of music, which I will show below,

are the tumbadora (salidor)part in the most popular form of Rumba called Guaguancand a

drum part in the Bembensemble. Please note that there are several ways to play these drum

parts as well as geographically differing sub-styles of these genres.

Salidor (Guaguanc):

3Other examples of this juxtaposition are Reggae and early RocknRoll.

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In this tumbao, the slap accent on beat 2 is omitted in favour of a bass note on the and

of 2. This bass note is often emphasized, especially on the 3-side of the clave. It is then known

as the bombo note, because thats the rhythmic position for the bombo, the bass drum in

Congaparades. This feature diminishes the metrical two-beat character typical of the marcha.

The salidor (tumbadora) in Rumba is grounded to a higher degree in the tresillo, cinquillo

and tangomovements than related to a binary meter.

Incorporating both the 4 and the 2+, both of which are directly derived from the tresillo

pattern, the Guaguanc salidor gains more typical tumbao quality than the marcha or

standard tumbaoof the Guaracha, Son or Mambo.

It should be mentioned that in Rumba Guaguanc the salidor is generally played as a

two-bar pattern. In this case the bass note an 2+ appears only on the 3-side of the clave, being

substituted on the 2-side by a finger tap /closed slap sound:

We now come to the tumbadorapart in Bemb:

The first thing that we realize is that we are dealing here with a 6/8 meter as opposed to a

4/4 or 2/2 cut time. However, both the 6/8 meter and the cut time that we have observed so far

have in common that they are organized by two counts or beats to the measure: In cut timethese beats are 1 and 3 (or 1 and 2, depending on the way you count cut time meter), while in

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6/8 the beats are on 1 and 4 (or again 1 and 2, depending on your counting). The difference is

that in cut time we have 4 subdivisions to each beat, while we have only 3 in 6/8.

Afro-Cuban rhythmics, however, imply a typical equivalence between groupings of 3

eighth notes (as in 6/8) and groupings of 4 eighth notes in cut time (or 4 sixteenth notes as in

2/4, respectively):

Following this equivalence chart, it becomes obvious that the and of 2 in cut timecorresponds to the 3 in 6/8, while the beat on 4 in cut time becomes beat 5 in 6/8. This

demonstrates that the figures in cut time and 6/8 are rhythmically congruent, each of them

representing the tumbaowithin the specific style of music that they belong to.

What is of minor importance, is whether you have a single note or a double note in the

relevant positions of 4 (plus 4+) or 2+ (plus 3). This may only become a matter of considera-

tion when clave-related two-bar patterns are created by pairing a one-stroke tumbaomeasure

with a two-stroke measure:

Concluding this short trip into the rhythmics behind Afro-Cuban rhythms, it has to be

pointed out that due to the rhythmical equivalence of quadruple- and triple-subdivided duple

meters, transitions between cut time (or 2/4) and 6/8 are as easy to manage as any hybrid

interpretation half-way between duple and triple feel. I encourage every student of Afro-Cuban music to practice gradual shifts from a duple rhythmic structure to its triple counterpart

and back, by slowly morphing one form into the other. Somewhere in the middle we are

passing all the hybrid states along the gamut from perfect duple to perfect triple meter that are

impossible to notate, but are even the more interesting, because a decent number of Afro-

Cuban rhythms, especially in Rumba, are performed in this hybrid feel. This is also true of the

salidorin Guaguanc, which is almost never played in perfectly even eighths.4

Understandably, music students trained in the western way of clearly setting even eighths

apart from triplets will face the difficulty of breaking this rule and play some undefinable in-

between stuff that practically does not exist in their musical universe. My answer to this is

4The great, popular and influential percussion teacher Michael Spiro has coined the term playing in fix for this

hybrid feel (meaning between four and six).

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that I, too, was coming from the same world, and I did learn it, because I wanted to! Even

musicians who dont plan to stay in in the field of Cuban music too long, can achieve more

interpretative freedom by exploring that grey middle zone of hybrid rhythms.5

The Proper Drum to Start Off

As I tried to explain, it is not only sufficient but also wise to start learning to play the

congas by practicing on one single drum only. If you already know that you are going to

advance to a conga set of two, three or more drums, you might decide to purchase the

complete set together and put all the drums but one aside until their turn comes up. I suggest

that the drum that you should use in the beginning be a medium-sized conga with an

approximate diameter of 10 to 11 inches, also depending on the size of your hands. I

recommend natural steer hide of about 3/16" to 4/16" thickness tuned to a medium tension.6

I would like to mention that the denominations of quinto, conga and tumbadora (or

tumba), as displayed in music stores and catalogues of percussion manufacturers, are

inaccurate in a traditional sense. You ought to know that a quintois a high pitched solo drumin either a Rumba group or a Conga de Comparsa. So quinto defines rather a musical role

than a drum size. Both tumbadoraand conga drum mean the same thing, with tumbadora

connotating the function of playing a tumbao, while conga drum points to the instruments

original application. A tumba(besides being the Spanish word for tomb) is a drum in the

so-called Tumba francesa, a musical genre from the Eastern Orienteprovince in Cuba. The

terminology of quinto, congaand tumbato differentiate the drum sizes in a three-drum-setup

has exclusively been a marketing invention. It has become pretty common outside of Cuba,

but that doesnt make it any more correct. However, if this nomenclature helps in communica-

tion, then use it for heavens sake.

The Right-Hand Action

In closing, let me say a few words about the slap and the open tone, particularly as

applied to the marchaor standard conga tumbao. I do not want to try giving exact technical

advice here, because I believe this to be the task of the drum teacher in a live lesson. (Even in

a personal instruction situation it is often difficult enough to demonstrate how the various

sounds are produced.)

Usually, the conga slap technique demands more practice from the beginner than any

other sound, at least as far as the mere effect is concerned. As a percussion teacher, I teach the

open slap first, although to some people, the closed slap first seems to come easier. Often I am

approached by percussionists who have already worked out their own way of playing a closedslap, only to realize that they have developed the habit of grabbing or pressing the slap, which

results in more effort, pain and potential damage for less attack and therefore less sound (slap

quality). Now that is virtually the definitionof bad technique! The closed slap can either be

derived from an accelerated, accented finger stroke, or from finishing the open slap by gently

leaving the fingers of the striking hand on the drum. The point is that, once you master the

open slap, you practically obtain the closed slap as a bonus gift or by-product not vice

versa!

5The balano, the specific type of swing in Brazilian Samba, is a similar (but not identical) phenomenon. Mind

that even in the Afro-American music in the U.S., we deal with various degrees of swing in Shuffles, Boogie-Woogie etc.6Called afinacin centralby Changuito. All of this is up to personal preference and experience and cannot be

properly described in written form. (Consult your drum teacher.)

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As soon as the disciple proudly realizes that he can play a decent slap stroke at some

volume, he is tempted to over-emphasize the slap in the tumbao. Remember that the tumbao

movement, as well as the principal sound of the conga as a musical instrument, is character-

ized by the open tones first and foremost. This must be considered when working out the

balance in the rhythmic pattern.

The slap in the tumbaois usually a muffled closed slap (with the left hand resting flat onthe drum head). At fast tempos, open slaps can be used, as the left hand mutes the skin tone

sufficiently. I should mention, however, that some (particularly older) drummers who predate

that standard may employ a closed or even open slap without left-hand muffling.

I teach my students to play open tones with a sensible share of punch, because thats

what gives some meat to the tone and makes the conga drum deliver a real rhythmic impact

that can carry a band without needing additional amplification. This somehow old-school

device does not only make the congueromore independent, it also creates what I regard to be

the real, typical, masculine conga sound that I have enjoyed since I heard it for the first time

(no gender discrimination intended).

What is also important is to utilize the gravity of your arms in order to save physical

energy and achieve volume with ease. This refers to the open tone as well as (to some extent)

the bass stroke. Of course, with the amount of amplification used today in big pop music

shows, there is a natural limit to performing without microphones for the congas. All I can say

is that with my technique, I played acoustically a two-hour concert with a full big band, com-

plete with drum set and directly in front of a huge bass cabinet and was assured I could be

heard. And I am not exactly a gorilla.

Thomas Altmann, August 2013

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