Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments--and our new web site!!

Africans kidnapped and brought to Peru as slaves were forbidden to play musical instruments, especially drums.  This is primarily because the Spanish plantation owners realized the Africans could use the drums to communicate over long distances, which could be a threat to the slave-holding system.

As a result, Afro-Peruvians were put in the position of developing their own musical instruments with materials they found at hand.

Some of these percussion instruments.

They made percussion instruments out of donkey's jawbones, wooden packing crates, hollowed-out logs, the wooden collection boxes in the churches, ceramic jars, gourds, and on and on.  They were nothing if not inventive.

These instruments have been handed down and refined, so that now, some of them are widely used in Peruvian music and one, the Peruvian cajón, has also entered many other forms of music including jazz and flamenco.

The Peruvian cajón.

It is to be expected that over time, others will also find wide acceptance in the musical world because, when handled by a master, they provide rich and varied sounds.

And now, a short note...not from our sponsor (we don´t have one) but just to let you know that we´ve made major revisions in our web site over the past month and would like to invite you to check it out.  Kudos for this work go to our web master, Nicolas Patris.  Here´s a link to his web site LINK, and here´s a link to ours LINK.

OUR NEXT POST will be about how to know when to stop.