The Tumbadora (Conga Drum) and Its Tumbao

by Thomas Altmann (08/2013)

Introduction: Short Historical Outline of the Instrument

The conga drum or tumbadora in 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 for
the 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

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Modern conga drum

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 toques in 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 other
percussion 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 incorporating 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 the
1950s, the congueros did 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 ethnic
references 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 tumbao has 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, without
producing any definite sound with it, just like there are timbales players who omit their left
hand for reasons of efficiency.1 I 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 interchangeable! 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 turning
the 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 tumbadora part in a comparsa conga (Conga parade), which is also known as
the rebajadora part. (The deep sounding rebajadora is to back up, or reinforce in the lower
register, the high-pitched salidor drum.)
1

A 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 conjunto of Arsenio Rodrguez (1936)2.
Arsenios conjunto played a lot of what he called Son Montuno, which was usually slowerpaced. 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 tumbao or marcha as it is
played today:

or:

According to Candido Camero in Candido: Legendary Conguero by Bobby Sanabria [LP Highlights in
Percussion Vol. 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 somehow misleading, because it suggests that the inserted finger stroke is of minor musical significance, 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 strokes
be 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 synchronize his part with the other guys. With a strong left hand, a conguero could easily carry
the whole band just by himself. A conga drummers strong left hand is a virtue reminiscent of
the left hand in playing stride piano. Only a strong left hand teams well up with the right to
establish that relentless marcha quality 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, manoteo or pescadito (little fish, alluding to
the movements of a landed fish). As these two stroke techniques are obviously complementary, the manoteo exploits 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 hand
drumming 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 conguero Giovanni Hidalgo (Maenguito) transferred the mano secreta to
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 execute
the 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 manoteo in your bass strokes! Whenever you
feel you are getting caught up in your fingerwork during your practice sessions, go back and
cut 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 tumbao already 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
tumbao variations 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 tumbao fit 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 interpretation (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.3 Most later congueros, however, did adapt themselves to the swing
feel perfectly.

Tumbaos in Other Cuban Styles

Some of the tumbao examples in other Cuban styles of music, which I will show below,
are the tumbadora (salidor) part in the most popular form of Rumba called Guaguanc and a
drum part in the Bemb ensemble. Please note that there are several ways to play these drum
parts as well as geographically differing sub-styles of these genres.
Salidor (Guaguanc):

Other 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
Conga parades. 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 tango movements 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 tumbao of 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 tumbadora part 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 time
these 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 time
corresponds 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 tumbao within 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 consideration when clave-related two-bar patterns are created by pairing a one-stroke tumbao measure
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 AfroCuban 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 AfroCuban rhythms, especially in Rumba, are performed in this hybrid feel. This is also true of the
salidor in 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 inbetween stuff that practically does not exist in their musical universe. My answer to this is

The 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 quinto is a high pitched solo drum
in either a Rumba group or a Conga de Comparsa. So quinto defines rather a musical role
than a drum size. Both tumbadora and 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 Oriente province in Cuba. The
terminology of quinto, conga and tumba to 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 communication, 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 marcha or 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 closed
slap, 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 definition of 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!
5

The 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, BoogieWoogie etc.
6
Called afinacin central by 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 characterized by the open tones first and foremost. This must be considered when working out the
balance in the rhythmic pattern.
The slap in the tumbao is usually a muffled closed slap (with the left hand resting flat on
the 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 conguero more 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, complete 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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