*100c-Bongo
The Bongo is an instrument of Cuban origin consisting of two drums joined together a pair of small open bottomed drums of different sizes. In Spanish the larger drum is called the ”hembra” (female) and the small head, “macho” (male). The heads are made of calfskin and the instrument is customarily played between the player’s legs while seated. The large head is on the right side of the player. The bongos are tuned to a high pitch, and are noted for their sharp, cutting timbre. The basic rhythm of the bongos is called martillo (“hammer”), which consists of a steady eighth note pattern in which the hands alternate: right, left, right, left. The strokes on the off-beats are produced by all finger tips together, or with the side of the thumb. Often, phrases played on the large drum are answered by the small drum. The bongos have a more dominant sound, and the bongoseros in the “son groups” were improvising in a more aggressive fashion behind the rest of the group. An interesting technique of the son bongoseros was the finger roll.
It is produced by rubbing a finger braced by a thumb across the head. It produces a sound that resembles a moose call.
*140c- Raspa
This is a musical instrument with a serrated surface that gives a rasping sound when scraped with a stick, originally made from an elongated gourd and used in Latin American music.
The raspa is a Latin American percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd, with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet sound.
The raspa is commonly used in Puerto Rican, Cuban and other forms of Latin American music, and plays a key role in the typical rhythm section of important genres like son, trova and salsa. Playing the güiro usually requires both long and short sounds, made by scraping up and down in long or short strokes.
The raspa, like the maracas, is often played by a singer. It is closely related to the Cuban guayo and the Dominican güira, which are made of metal.
*205c-Accordion
Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type, colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The instrument is played by compressing or expanding the bellows while pressing buttons or keys, causing pallets to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called reeds. These vibrate to produce sound inside the body. Valves on opposing reeds of each note are used to make the instrument's reeds sound louder without air leaking from each reed block. The performer normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand manual, and the accompaniment, consisting of bass and pre-set chord buttons, on the left-hand manual. Additionally, the accordion is also used in cajun, zydeco, jazz music and in both solo and orchestra performances of classical music. The piano accordion is the official city instrument of San Francisco, California.
*220c-Marimba
Like the instrument itself the name ”marimba” originated in Africa; the words rimba
xylophone with a single bar) and ma(= a great number of objects) are Bantu (spoken in Malawi and Mozambique). In many African languages the term ma-rimbais therefore used to describe instruments with several bars. The name marimba accompanied the instrument from Africa via Latin America to Europe, where in many countries the suffix -phone (Greek for ”sound”) has been added.
But the cultural backgrounds of the two instruments are vastly different; the marimba originated in central Africa but developed independently, gaining its own identity and significance.
The marimba looks almost exactly the same as the xylophone, but is larger, has a lower register (from bass through tenor to alto) and a wider compass. It is a xylophone with resonators – xylo-phon simply means ”wood sounder” – pitched an octave deeper.
Because its bars are made of softer wood and are thinner than the xylophone’s, the marimba has a much softer, darker and richer timbre. In the 1930s an instrument called the xylomarimba (xylorimba) was made for solo playing which was intended to combine the best of both instruments. The xylomarimba was made primarily because it had a range of five octaves (C3–C8), but its sound quality left something to be desired and today it is very rarely encountered.
The marimba did not arouse the interest of orchestra composers and musicians until the 1950s, but since then it has established itself as part of the standard percussion section. The xylophone, its wooden counterpart, found its niche there much earlier. The marimba’s tasks are located in the middle and lower registers.
Thanks to its pleasing sound it has now gained more importance than the xylophone as a solo and virtuoso instrument.
* 500c-Steelpan
The Steel pan or drum is a unique instrument, and one of the most recently invented.
The steel drum can produce every musical note and every kind of music you can imagine. We often associate the steel pan with Soca, Calypso and Carnival.
Leonard Turner, a Trinidadian immigrant who worked at the Lago Oil Refinery, was the first to introduce steel bands in Aruba. Being unhappy with the lack of entertainment on the island, Turner recruited a group of young men and they began experimenting with music. This resulted in the first ever steel band in Aruba, named Shoo-Shoo Baby and Aruba All Star Boys.
They started making their steel pans from oil drums collected from the Lago Oil Refinery. The barrels were formed by hammering the bottoms with a sledge hammer until they had the right shape and tone.
The group increasingly started to play variants of the samba, rumba and other popular music on their home-made instruments. As their rhythm and appearance became more common, and popularity grew, more and more musicians joined. Some of the steel bands grew to over forty musicians.
The first Carnival steel band competition ever was organized in 1964. Eight steel bands competed in a legendary competition. The Merrymakers, the Devils, the Curacao Heroes, the Long Gun Boys, the Paradera Steelband, The Silver Stars, The All Stars, and the Aruba Invaders were all talented groups which produced the most amazing sounds. Finally the Aruba Invaders won with their variant of the theme from exodus, making them the first Aruban steel band competition winners.
Edgar Connor was the founder of the legendary Aruba Invaders and was also considered to be Aruba’s greatest pan man. He taught himself to play, spent his life doing the painstaking and highly skilled work of hammering out steel pans from used oil drums, as well as tuning them. Edgar passed on his knowledge of steel pan to his children who on a daily basis are still active.
By the 60’s & 70’s of the last century multiple steelbands were providing music for the carnival parades. The bands became so popular that a total of 18 steel bands participated in the 1978 steelband competition. Unfortunately, the amount of musical pan men decreased in the 90’s of the last century because of a lack of institutional support and appreciation. Today, steelbands are almost a lost art. There are only a handful active pan men around who play in the hotels, Aruba Ports Authority, Airport and Cultural events. You will rarely ever see a steelband in a parade, although one or two may exist.
