Here’s a loop of an Afro 6/8 groove which I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of, lately. It’s a couple of measures of Pancho’s Seis Por Ocho, from Bamboleate Eddie Palmieri/Cal Tjader. The […]
Category: Afro-Cuban
Daily best music in the world: Mozambique
Melao Para El Sapo, a New York-style Mozambique by Eddie Palmieri. I’m finding that my page of Mozambique from 2013 is holding up pretty well as a method for getting some basic fluency with this […]
Triplet bell patterns
Here’s a nice video by a British percussionist, cataloging a whole lot of mostly-folkloric, triplet-based/compound meter, bell patterns from around the world: It’s always good to use caution trusting people’s interpretation and scholarship with these […]
Page o’ coordination: Afro 6/8 — “Guiro”
A new POC in 6/8, with a variation on our usual bell pattern, pulled directly from Ed Uribe’s excellent, horrifying, massive book, The Essence of Afro-Cuban Percussion and Drum Set. The pattern comes from Guiro, […]
Groove o’ the day: Art Blakey afro
This is a triplet Afro feel by Art Blakey, one of the major people playing that feel in a hard bop setting in the late 50s/early 60s. I usually call it a 6/8 feel— some […]
Generic Latin method for Syncopation: part 1
Here’s a basic method for doing a generic, Afro-Cuban-derived Latin feel using the book Syncopation. We’ll be taking rhythmic patterns out of Reed, and using them as our bell pattern, playing them with the right […]
Groove o’ the day: Mickey Roker Latin
Fantastic, I hadn’t planned it this way, but here’s yet another thing you have to buy— a Latin groove by Mickey Roker, on the tune Woody’n You, on McCoy Tyner’s album Live At Newport: Roker plays […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin Afro 6
All I can say is, we’re all going to be masters of the 6/8 Afro groove by the time we’re finished here. That’s fine. It’s a lot of fun to play, to listen to, and […]
Page o’ coordination: Afro 6/8 — a hard one
This is something I wasn’t going to post until I had made decent headway with it; which I have, at the cost of some misery. If you’ve been keeping up with current events, the Afro […]
Locking with clave — 01
This is derived from an idea discussed by David Peñalosa in his book Rumba Quinto. In rumba, an Afro-Cuban genre, the quinto is the highest-pitched conga drum; the quinto player is the lead player, improvising […]