Speaking with colleagues about music and instruments, we finally dicussed about the instrument the ¨cajon¨ well known here in Spain, I never heard about it before, so curious like I am, I went directly to my PC and ¨googled¨ it, here some interesting informations:
Cajón, The story :
The Cajón is a kind of box played by playing by slapping the front face with the hands. the cajón is the most widely used Afro-Peruvian musical instrument in the 20th century.
Slaves of West and Central African origin in the Americas, specifically Peru, are considered to be the source of the cajón drum; though the instrument is common in musical performance throughout the Americas, especially Cuba.
The cajón was most likely developed in coastal Peru during the early 1800s.,
Knowing that the cajón comes from slave musicians in the Spanish colonial Americas, there are two complementary origin theories for the instrument. It is possible that the drum is a direct descendant of a number of boxlike musical instruments from west and central Africa, especially Angola, and the Antilles.
Another theory posits that slaves simply used boxes as musical instruments to combat contemporary Spanish colonial bans on music in predominantly African areas. In this way, cajóns could easily be disguised as seats or stools, thus avoiding identification as musical instruments. In all likelihood it is a combination of these factors - African origins and Spanish suppression of slave music - that led to the cajón's creation.
In contemporary times, the instrument became an integral important part of Peruvian music and Cuban music.
In the 1970s the instrument was introduced to Flamenco music by guitarist Paco de Lucia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paco_de_Luc%C3%ADa
It sounds really great and it is possible to make sound with your own body while sitting on the instrument...
We learned something new again today !! :-D
No comments:
Post a Comment