Candombe
Located in 2 routes
Candombe is the Afro-Uruguayan barrel-drum music of Montevideo, built on a cuerda de tambores — three hand-played, fire-tuned drums of different sizes strapped over the shoulder — whose interlock is the whole genre: the small, high chico ticks the tempo relentlessly, the mid-range repique cuts across it with syncopated calls and improvised breaks, and the deep piano lays a low, loping bass phrase underneath, all anchored by the clave-like madera struck on the drum shell; heard in the street the cuerda is dozens of drummers walking in formation behind flag-bearers and the mama vieja and gramillero dance characters, an enormous rolling polyrhythm you feel in the chest; on record it becomes a groove that singers, pianos, horns and electric bands ride, and the 1960s candombe-beat fusion set that same drum pattern against rock and soul, giving Uruguayan popular song its instantly recognisable limping, forward-leaning swing.
History
Candombe formed in Montevideo among enslaved and free Afro-descendants, many with Congo-Angola roots, and survived through the conventillos and the comparsas of the old Black districts — Barrio Sur, Palermo and Cordón — where the Cuareim and Ansina drumming lines are still named after the streets and families that carried them; it entered the recording industry in the 1950s with Pedro Ferreira, "el Rey del Candombe," whose Orquesta Cubanacán cut the commercial sides between 1957 and 1962 that turned "Biricunyamba" and "La Llamada" into standards, later restored by Ayuí/Tacuabé and the Centro Nacional de Documentación Musical Lauro Ayestarán; Lágrima Ríos sang it alongside tango, and from 1969 Rubén Rada's "Las Manzanas" and his band Tótem (1971) fused the cuerda with rock and soul into candombe beat, a line Eduardo Mateo's Mateo solo bien se lame (1972) pushed toward minimal, acoustic strangeness and Jaime Roos carried into mainstream Uruguayan song with Brindis por Pierrot (1985). Hugo Fattoruso — of Los Shakers and Opa — returned from abroad to make candombe his life's work with Grupo del Cuareim (Candombe, 1999) and Rey Tambor (Palo y Mano, 2001), and the Llamadas processions each February, plus UNESCO's 2009 inscription of candombe and its socio-cultural space, keep the street practice and the recorded genre feeding each other; because the same drums underpin Montevideo's tango and murga, candombe is often cross-listed with Rioplatense music, but its instrument, its neighbourhoods and its lineage are Afro-Uruguayan first.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Biricunyamba — Pedro Ferreira y su Orquesta CubanacánSpotifyYouTube
- Las Manzanas(1969) — Rubén RadaSpotifyYouTube
- Dedos(1971) — TótemSpotifyYouTube
- Yulelé(1972) — Eduardo MateoSpotifyYouTube
- Brindis por Pierrot(1985) — Jaime RoosSpotifyYouTube
- Lonjas de Cuareim(1999) — Hugo Fattoruso & Grupo del CuareimSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- UNESCO, "Candombe and its socio-cultural space: a community practice" (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2009), https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/candombe-and-its-socio-cultural-space-a-community-practice-00182
- Centro Nacional de Documentación Musical Lauro Ayestarán, "Pedro Ferreira, el Rey del Candombe y su Orquesta Cubanacán" (CDM Uruguay), http://www.cdm.gub.uy/las-actividades/listado/pedro-ferreira-el-rey-del-candombe-y-su-orquesta-cubanacan
- Hugo Fattoruso & Rey Tambor, "Palo y Mano" (Rey Tambor / Bandcamp, 2001), https://reytambor.bandcamp.com/album/palo-y-mano
- Guru'Guay, "What is candombe?" (Guru'Guay), https://www.guruguay.com/candombe/