Hockessin man exports rhythm from Cuba

A person would be hard pressed to find a wallflower in Cuba.

Once a deft percussionist starts tapping out an infectious rhythm on a conga drum, dancing seems to be the only option, said Charlie Campagna, of Hockessin Greene.

“The rhythms really just take you right off your feet,” said Campagna, who spent two weeks on the Caribbean island studying the nuances of Afro-Cuban drumming on a trip organized by Chuck Silverman, a Los Angeles-based percussionist.

He went with an international group of percussionists and, as an American, had to travel with very specific permission – meaning he was there to do research and bring his knowledge back to students in the U.S.

And the retired engineer turned drum teacher plans to do just that, he said, by translating some of his newfound rhythmic understanding onto the drum set for his pupils.

Campagna’s two-week trip, which took him to the capital of Havana and the nearby city of Matanzas, was really a cultural case study with a rhythmic soundtrack.

Nearly all of the 11 million people who inhabit Cuba survive on the equivalent of $11 a month, plus a book of food stamps, so music provides a welcome escape from the abject poverty that surrounds them, he said.

History and heritage are important to the inhabitants of Cuba, a nation that seems to have been frozen in time during the 1950s, Campagna said, but while the buildings are crumbling and the cars have fins, that doesn’t stop the music.

The Cubans, most of whom are descendents from West African slaves, have preserved the music of their ancestors, he said, which makes Afro-Cuban percussion the core of the country’s musical tradition.

The music is characterized by the many-layered rhythms of several conga drums playing at once, he explained, all revolving around one central rhythm played on a clave, an instrument similar to a woodblock.

“To the Western ear, it is very hard to decipher where the beat is because we don’t hear rhythm that way,” he said. “To our ear, it is very abstract, but to them it is everyday music.”

Because of the rhythmic complexity, much of the visiting percussionists’ studies focused on ear training, he said.

While it can be challenging for an American audience to grasp, Cubans grow up surrounded by the drum rhythms and study them in school, he said.

“They sort of always move to the music,” he said. “Even when they walk down the street, it’s rhythmic.”

Much of the music also revolves around the religion Santeria, which merges Roman Catholicism with belief systems of West Africa, he said.

Religious ceremonies require the use of drums called batas, Campagna explained, and those sacred drums can only be touched by someone participating in the ceremony. The Cubans offer food sacrifices to the gods – orishas – and chant along with the syncopated music, he said.

One ceremony the group watched was held in a tiny, narrow apartment, with plaster peeling off the walls, curtains dividing the three rooms and a few fans providing little relief from the sweltering heat. But the drummers didn’t miss a beat, he said.

Some ceremonies are even more elaborate. In one, they watched a group of men twirl machetes while they danced.

The rhythms of conga drums again filled the air at a rumba party the guest percussionists visited, Campagna said. During the party, they watched dancers perform a vacunao, a flirtatious dance where the male dancer tries to touch the female dancer’s pelvis while she attempts to defend herself.

What impressed Campagna the most was how the music just seemed to be in-bred in the people of Cuba, he said, and how the rhythms had an uplifting effect.

“As bad as conditions are, when they speak of their count