Songo

What it is

Jose Luis Quintana, who everyone calls Changuito, joined Los Van Van in 1970 and spent the decade solving a problem: how to get a rumba ensemble's interlock out of one person sitting behind a drum kit. What he arrived at pulls the guaguanco parts onto snare, kick and hi-hat, keeps the congas playing an actual marcha next to him, and adds ghost notes on the snare so dense that the pattern reads as a wash with accents cut out of it. Blas Egues had started the idea, Changuito made it a system, and by the early eighties every dance band in Havana had a drummer working on it. It is also where Cuban dance music absorbed funk without sounding like it was imitating anybody.

What it sounds like

A kit recorded dry and close, sitting inside a band rather than in front of it. The snare is tuned high with the wires slack, so the ghost strokes are more air than crack and the accented ones sound like a different drum. Kick is short and unpitched. Hi-hats are half open and slightly grubby. Next to the kit, congas with the room left in and timbale shells that ring like scaffolding. Above that: a piano playing a repeating figure that never resolves, a bass that leaves beat one alone, and a horn section that arrives late and loud.

Key elements

• Ghost notes as textureSnare strokes down at thirty velocity crowding the sixteenths around the accents. Played evenly they sound wrong; the point is that they are uneven.
• Accents on the claveThe loud snare strokes sit where clave strokes sit, so the kit is playing the same figure the sticks would be playing, at a different volume.
• The conga next to the kitSongo does not replace the congas, it sits beside them. The marcha keeps running and the drummer works in the gaps it leaves.
• A kick that syncopatesBeat 1, the and of 2, beat 4, and then something different in the second bar. It is not a pulse, it is a voice with an opinion.
• Timbale shellsThe metal sides of the timbales carrying a pattern that outlines the clave, played by a percussionist rather than by the drummer.

How to get them

• Snare layeringUse two samples: a full stroke for the accents and a much softer, shorter one for the ghosts. Turning one sample down is not the same, because a quiet snare sample and a genuinely light stroke have different spectra.
• Ghost placementWrite the accents first, fill sixteenths around them at velocity 30 to 46, then delete about a third of what you wrote. Density that survives editing sounds played; density that does not sounds programmed.
• Hi-hatEighths with the beats around 72 and the offbeats near 50, half open on the stick so there is a little sizzle. Open it fully once a bar and let it ring across the barline.
• CongasProgram a marcha and then break it: move one open tone, drop one heel stroke, add a slap. A perfectly regular marcha under a songo kit sounds like two records playing at once.
• BassAnticipate. Put the root on the and of 4 before the chord changes and leave beat 1 alone entirely. That is the single most Cuban thing you can do to a bassline.
• Tempo196 in the fast count, which is where Los Van Van sat. The two-bar clave cycle fills the whole thirty-two steps, so the two halves of the loop are genuinely different bars. Halve it to 98 if your project sits at a club tempo and you want the cycle inside one bar.

Reference points

Jose Luis Changuito Quintana, Juan Formell and Los Van Van, Blas Egues, Irakere, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Robby Ameen and Ignacio Berroa on the New York side. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.