Eventually, its design came to consist of a round hole in the back, for resonance. The types of woods for the surface came to be mostly rosewood for the playing surface, and a light spruce wood for the case: making it portable, and the different types of wood interacting adds to the tonality.
From then on, in Peru, the interesting journey begun.. to quote from a Eric B & Rakim song sample (on Paid In Full): “this is a journey into sound”.
The cajón’s short, staccato plywood sound apparently added sonic aspects beyond mere “drum copying”. In the early stages, among Afro-Peruvians, the cajón patterns followed more the Central African “straight rhythm” patterns, including call-and-response. The differing sounds (rim, higher, centre, bass, and hand use) enabled different tones.
Yet, it’s wooden, somewhat “shuffling” sound lent itself to more options too: more “around the beat” and “swinging”, as common in other traditions in Africa, like Senegambia/Guinee , but also in the Islamic world, South Europe, and the Middle East.
TRAVELLING INSTRUMENTS
More instruments have interesting “travelling stories” that are worth knowing: it teaches us a lot about certain historical epochs and conditions, power relations, inequalities, etcetera. The mouth-organ/harmonica is of – hear this – German origin, reaching the US through German migrants, getting somehow in contact with African Americans, the latter liking its portability and relative cheapness.. and possibilities. Result: the common role of the harmonica in Blues.
The common drum kit (snare, bass, cymbals) in Western pop originated as such in New Orleans, the acoustic guitar (with Persian/Moorish antecedents) in southern Spain, the cymbals in China, the Conga and Bongos in Cuba (with Central African antecedents), the saxophone was invented by a Belgian, as many may know, etcetera etcetera, and all these instruments spead internationally.
What is interesting about these migrations of instruments throughout the world, and from culture to culture, I think, is the reason why they migrate in that particular manner, and to specific genres. Do they fit better? Other cultural connections?
This is in fact a common, recurring theme in this blog of mine. I discussed how the originally Afro-Cuban “guiro” scraper became commonly used in Jamaican Reggae music. Afro-Cuban Congas ended up in even mainstream Jazz, Funk, and Soul in the US, for instance.
As mentioned, the harmonica/mouth-organ travelled historically from Germany to the US From fanfare-like (South) German traditional music, to something very different: the African American Blues.
SPAIN
The first international spread of the Afro-Peruvian “cajón” was different: namely to Spain, Peru’s erstwhile colonizer. This was through Flamenco artist Paco De Lucía, encountering and becoming enchanted by the cajón box, when in Peru in the 1970s. De Lucía said he almost immediately noticed, when played along with the guitar, that it fitted very well with Spanish Flamenco, and better than other percussion.
This was due to the sound. The plywood/rosewood, staccato sound resembled the hand-clapping and “zapateo” (foot-tapping) in the Flamenco tradition, in fact sounding somewhat in-between clapping and zapateo/foot-tapping.
Again the “shuffling” plays a role here, relating to the North-African “swinging”, meandering rhythmic structure influencing Flamenco. This is echoed also in, for instance, the Darbuka playing style in the Middle East and North Africa, and other (string) instruments: “around/toward” the beats, rather than straight on them (the latter more common more to the “polyrhythmic” south in Africa).
Hide drums like congas, bongos, or djembes do less allow that shuffle, and offer more “rounded”, full sounds. Congas and bongos were and are used sometimes in Flamenco, but the cajón became much more successful, even to the point of being “incorporated” regularly. It took partly over the beating of rhythms for each Flamenco type on the guitar, and clapping/foot tapping, or combined with it. Its very sonic characteristics explain this suitability.
Paco De Lucía’s percussionist, the Brazilian Rubem Dantas, incorporated the cajón by the mid-1970s, and from then it spread within wider Spanish Flamenco, with thus origins in a former colony of Spain, among people of African descent. Some ironies perhaps here, but also a nice, open influence between different cultures.
By now the cajón has been fully incorporated, almost normalized, within Flamenco music.
In Spain, the instrument was adapted: strings were attached to the back for more resonance and a louder, “buzz” sound, being in part a Moorish influence, and other details also were changed. A distinct “flamenco cajón” type – with strings tied behind the surface - thus developed.
This route from Peru to Spain, and other parts of Europe, is only one of the journeys of the cajón, though.
CUBA
Cajones – wooden boxes - , once used for transport of goods, repurposed to be drummed (and sat) on are not unique to Peru. Similar cajones arose in Cuban port cities like Havana and Matanzas, when the Rumba music genre developed among Afro-Cubans, in the later 19th c.. “Rumba” itself was born from different influences from Africa and Afro-Cuban culture, including from drumming from the Congo region, from Yoruba patterns, and from the music from the Abakua secret societies, with origins among Efik people in the Cameroun/Nigerian frontier Calabar region in Africa. These influences translated to a percussion-dominated, call-and-response-based secular style known as Rumba in and around Havana and Matanzas in Western Cuba and beyond.
Well now, historically, early urban Rumba in cities like Havana and Matanzas was played on wooden boxes, cajones, reportedly once used to import “bacalao” (cod, codfish) into Cuba. These had different sizes and functions, in threefold – an African retention. The biggest boxes had a bass function – like the later Tumba or Salidor conga, a middle one (Conga), and the higher pitched a “quinto” function, like later well-known Conga drums (called Tumbadoras in Cuba) similarly would come in 3 sizes and functions.
In more rural areas of Cuba, “regular” hide drums like the Makuta (of Congo/Bantu origin) – a precursor to the later tumbadora or conga – tended to be used earlier in Rumba. The Rumba de cajón survived longer in port cities like Havana, but later also replaced mostly by what we know as Conga drums (called “Tumbadoras” in Cuba).
There are still some Rumba groups in Havana using the cajón as part of their sets, often with conga drums, and other percussion instruments (bells, shekere).
The Cuban cajón is of wood, but is in shape more toward a conga, and is usually played between the knees, rather than sat on, as the Peruvian one.
The history of these Cuban cajones seem to have no direct relation to the Afro-Peruvian cajones, logistically that is, though culturally they can be seen as “cousins”. Though once both Spanish colonies, the route from Peru’s Pacific coast to the northern Caribbean port of Havana was far from direct or easy: the Panama canal still had to be built.
CONGO
Apart from the Spanish colonial connection, the cajones in Peru and Cuba do share an African cultural connection too, though, such as in Congo/Bantu African patterns, and some other African retentions as well.
Origins of enslaved Africans in the West could differ somewhat from colony to colony, but the “Congo” origins are quite evenly spread, connecting this African diaspora largely musically. Therefore, Cuban-based Salsa, and Cuban Son, Rumba, and Brazilian Samba have musically in part evident Central African “Congo” origins, but to somewhat smaller degrees also Afro-Peruvian, Dominican, Haitian, Colombian, Curaçaoan, and Jamaican music genres. This Congo influence was noticeable also in the earliest playing styles of the cajón by Africans in Peru, in the 19th c.: straight rhythms, call-and-response, etcetera, etcetera.
So saying: ”the cajón as instrument originated in Peru” is in itself true, but too simple. A separate origin was there for other cajones in Cuba, and elsewhere in Latin America.
In Afro-Cuban Rumba, as mostly among Afro-Peruvians, the style of playing was more on straight rhythms and involving call-and-response – like a set of hand drums or conga’s. This was altered later toward a more “swinging”, meandering playing style, adapted to guitar-dominated Flamenco in Spain.
FLAMENCO
Nonetheless, compared to most other European music genres, South Spanish Flamenco is still relatively “rhythmic”, also in light of the structural place of basic rhythms for each Flamenco style, hand-clapping, tapping on the guitar, and the castanets used in Spanish traditional music (and some forms of Flamenco too).
Furthermore, the guitar playing style in Flamenco is relatively percussive. In time, Afro-Cuban influences came back to Spain via travelers, bringing the Guaracha and other Cuban rhythms, influencing a new type of Flamenco, called somewhat mistakenly (Flamenco) Rumba (another genre), but in reference to Cuban rhythmic influences. Some music historians – such as Robert Farris Thompson – point at earlier rhythmic influences; Moorish/North African ones, but also of Black Africans in Seville, being there since Moorish times, around the 10th c. AD (initially as slaves), influencing Flamenco’s rhythmic “syncopation”, after all quite unusual in European music.
Into all these Flamenco traditions, the cajón fitted very well.
REASONS
Therefore, one can say that the cajón has also an interesting, international history behind it. Some relate the origins, by the way, to the forbidding of hand drums – for fear of rebellion – by colonial authorities, and that the boxes at ports became replacements. There were such prohibitions in Spanish colonies from time to time, and even after it, such as in 1915 in Cuba, when public African drum use was for a period forbidden. Cuba was then semi-independent under US control (Spain lost the Spanish-American war in 1898, and with it Cuba as colony to the US), but Eurocentric repression continued regularly, both by Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon authorities. Some racist policies similar to US Southern states even reached Cuba then, including racial segregation, though with differing intensity, and proving less applicable in the more mixed context of Hispanic Cuba.
Colonial prohibitions of African hand drums thus play a role in the cajón boxes developing – also in Peru -, historians point out, but also convenience, arising after all in port cities where cargo and many boxes arrived. Besides: the drumming on boxes - as alternative to hand drums - would neither please the authorities very much, while the exploiting bosses wanted the workers to work, I imagine, ha ha.
Actual hand drums of animal skin, required certain skills to manufacture, explaining why hand drums (eventually resulting in what we know as Conga’s) entered Cuban Rumba first in rural areas, whereas urban port areas as Havana wooden boxes were used longer in Rumba, before replaced by animal-hide drums.
COMPARABLE INSTRUMENTS
Always interesting is to ask how unique the cajón as instrument is, and are there similar – if not identical – instruments.
Square drums one can sit on have been known historically, sometimes as large frame drums, even in Ancient Egypt, and in Africa. Mostly, though, drums tended to be round, and even the square ones developing had animal skin as surface, rather than wood. The Gumbeh drum in Ghana and Sierra Leone – and among Maroons in Jamaica, and elsewhere in the Caribbean – is sat on, like the cajón – and with some playing similarities (using also the heel of the foot, to mute), but sounds different.
Drumming and percussion in sub-Saharan Africa – even of wooden instruments, like the Krin or Ekwe log drum – tend to be sharper and rounder, fitting polyrhythmic functions. The wooden Spanish castanets also sound sharper and different. In playing style, Guinee-area Africa and North Africa, and in the Middle East have some instruments with sonically similar “shuffling” and “swinging” characteristics, in relation to dominant string instruments in Islamic-influenced cultures. The bendir frame drum (with an attached string on the back, like with the Flamenco cajón), common in North Africa, such as among the original Berber/Imazigh population – shares a ‘buzz” feel in the sound with that cajón, as in some sense the way the Darbuka is played in the Islamic world.
CONCLUSION
All in all, also the originally Afro-Peruvian Cajón has an intriguing history, revealing different rhythmic traditions within Latin America, Africa, and the Mediterranean basin, and cultural influences.
Its suitability for these different types of rhythms made the cajón over time internationally popular, and widely used in various genres, even in Western pop or rock here and there, in India, in Brazilian music, in Blues and Jazz, but most – as explained – in Spanish Flamenco, wherein it interestingly gained a solid place.
Yet, having heard the original string-less Afro-Peruvian cajón’s dry beats, I must admit that I – being a percussionist - like this “dry” sound, slighty different from the later “rounder” Conga drum sounds, but comparable in sharp poignancy, that I like in polyrhythmic African-based “straight rhythm” music. From “dry” and groovy in Peru, the cajón became more “fluid” in Flamenco, but that also has an unique appeal, and embellished many Flamenco songs.
How a wooden box became culture.. More beautiful even: became a way of creative resistance of the oppressed, through culture.
In addition, of course, also an early example of “recycling”..
