The culo'e puya drums, also known as culoepuya, culo e puya, or culepuya, are a battery of small drums originally from Venezuela, with a Kongo lineage. They are used in an ensemble also known as redondo drums, after the dance motion and the circle which forms around the dancers during performance.
Culo'e puya drums. From left to right: prima, cruzao, and pujao
The culo'e puya battery comprises three drums made of lightweight wood from the tree known locally as lano or ceiba de lana (Ceiba pentandra, a member of the Bombacaceae family, to which Balsa also belongs). Both ends have skin heads, which are joined with tensors made of rope (nylon rope is commonly used today). The drums are roughly 1.5m (4ft.) in length and between 10 and 15cm (4-6 inches) in diameter.
The inside of the drum is carved in the shape of an hourglass, instead of a cylinder.
There are three different diameters, each corresponding to a distinct "voice" or pattern. The different diameters are known as:
Prima - The smallest. Also called hembra (female) or quitimba or quichimba (a word of probable African origin, but whose exact meaning has been lost).
Cruzao - The middle diameter drum. The name means "hybrid" or "crossed".
Pujao - The largest diameter. Also called macho (male). The word pujao is a vernacular misspelling of the past participle of the verb pujar, which means to struggle, to push, or (colloquially, in South America) to moan as a result of extreme effort.
Playing technique
Redondo drums are held between the player's legs and played with a stick in one hand and the fingers of the other (bare) hand. There are six basic strokes:
Culo'e Puya drums are typical of the Barlovento region of North-central Venezuela. They are most commonly used in the festivities of the Summer Solstice/St. John the Baptist (June 24) as part of the Redondo ensemble, which also includes one or two maracas, voice and hand claps. The redondo players accompany the processions dedicated to St. John and play alongside it in an ensemble often called tambor pequeño or (small drum), to distinguish it from another battery of drums used during the St. John festivities, known as tambor grande (large drum), or Mina.
The basic pattern is usually notated in 6 8 or 12 8 time signatures. Each town in Barlovento has a unique way of interpreting the basic pattern and adds its own local variation, but in general, the prima carries the base of the rhythm and it is played on the upbeats, while the pujao improvises and the cruzao marks the downbeats. This contrasts with the role of the conga drums in the Cuban rumba, where the smallest drum is the soloist.
The pujao improvisations are centered on a set pattern, but they can achieve an impressive degree of variety when the percussionist is able to tune the drum while performing. This maneuver is considerably difficult, and it is based on the bass stroke to tune the drum down and a series of side hits to the edge of the drum head with the heel of the bare hand to tune the drum back up.
The Barlovento towns of Curiepe, Tacarigüita, La Boca and Mendoza still maintain the tradition of the Culo'e Puya, but their sound and unique rhythm has influenced the rest of the native forms of Venezuelan music.
Cuban pianist Omar Sosa included the sound of culo'e puyas in his release entitled Sentir.
Bibliography
Max H. Brandt African Drumming from Rural Communities around Caracas and Its Impact on Venezuelan Music and Ethnic Identity - published in Music and Black Ethnicity: the Caribbean and South America edited by Gerard H. Béhague - North-South Center Press at the University of Miami, 1994.
Jesús Chucho García Barlovento: Nuestro Patrimonio Cultural - Caracas, Fundación Afroamérica, Centro Cultural BID, IACEM n/d
The snare is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used in orchestras, concert bands, marching bands, parades, drumlines, drum corps, and more. It is one of the central pieces in a drum set, a collection of percussion instruments designed to be played by a seated drummer and used in many genres of music.
The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The heads may be made of calfskin or plastic and there is normally a means of adjusting the tension either by threaded taps or by strings. Bass drums are built in a variety of sizes, but size does not dictate the volume produced by the drum. The pitch and the sound can vary much with different sizes, but the size is also chosen based on convenience and aesthetics. Bass drums are percussion instruments and vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished.
Timbales or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size. They were developed as an alternative to classical timpani in Cuba in the early 20th century and later spread across Latin America and the United States.
A hand drum is any type of drum that is typically played with the bare hand rather than a stick, mallet, hammer, or other type of beater.
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto, tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). Congas were originally used in Afro-Cuban music genres such as conga and rumba, where each drummer would play a single drum. Following numerous innovations in conga drumming and construction during the mid-20th century, as well as its internationalization, it became increasingly common for drummers to play two or three drums. Congas have become a popular instrument in many forms of Latin music such as son, descarga, Afro-Cuban jazz, salsa, songo, merengue and Latin rock.
Gamelan gong kebyar is a style or genre of Balinese gamelan music of Indonesia. Kebyar means "to flare up or burst open", and refers to the explosive changes in tempo and dynamics characteristic of the style.
The mridangam is a percussion instrument of ancient origin. It is the primary rhythmic accompaniment in a Carnatic music ensemble. In Dhrupad, a modified version, the pakhawaj, is the primary percussion instrument. A related instrument is the Kendang, played in Maritime Southeast Asia.
Marching percussion instruments are instruments specially designed to be played while moving. This is achieved by attaching the drum(s) to a special harness worn by the drummer, although not all marching bands use such harnesses and instead use traditional baldrics to sling their drums.
The davul, dhol, tapan, atabal or tabl is a large double-headed drum that is played with mallets. It has many names depending on the country and region. These drums are commonly used in the music of the Middle East and the Balkans. These drums have both a deep bass sound and a thin treble sound due to their construction and playing style, where different heads and sticks are used to produce different sounds on the same drum.
Dunun is the generic name for a family of West African drums that have developed alongside the djembe in the Mande drum ensemble.
A repinique is a two-headed German drum used in samba baterias. It is used in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo Carnival baterias and in the baterias of Bahia, where it is known as repique. It is equivalent to the tik-tik in the non-Brazilian drum kit or to the tenor drum in marching bands. It is tuned very high to produce a tone that cuts through the sound of the rest of the bateria and it is a lead and solo instrument.
Ewe drumming refers to the drumming ensembles of the Ewe people of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The Ewe are known for their experience in drumming throughout West Africa. The sophisticated cross rhythms and polyrhythms in Ewe drumming are similar to those in Afro-Caribbean music and late jazz. The original purpose of Ewe drumming were sung or performed by warriors. Now the songs and performed to celebrate or for recreational use. For example, Agbadza was originally used as a warrior dance but is now used to celebrate events.
The güira is a percussion instrument from the Dominican Republic used as a percussion instrument in merengue, bachata, and to a lesser extent, other genres such as cumbia. It is made of a metal sheet and played with a stiff brush, thus being similar to the Haitian graj and the Cuban guayo and Puerto Rican güiro. Güira, guayo and güiro all have a function akin to that of the indigenous native maracas or the trap-kit's hi-hat, namely providing a complementary beat.
Merengue is a musical form extended through all the Caribbean. The first occurrences of merengue in print in Venezuela are from scores of “dance merengue” of the second half of the 19th century. As a dance craze, merengue acquired popularity in Caracas during the 1920s. It is distinct from the vastly more popular Dominican merengue. Although they share the same name, the rhythms have very little in common, except that they were commonly written for partner dancing.
Dhimay, Dhimaya or Dhime is a traditional Nepalese drum of the Newar people. According to the Hornbostel–Sachs classification, it belongs to the category of double-headed cylindrical membranophone.
Water drums are a category of membranophone characterized by the filling of the drum chamber with some amount of water to create a unique resonant sound. Water drums are used all over the world, but are found most prominently in a ceremonial as well as social role in the Indigenous music of North America, as well as in African music. The drums are most often made from a pot of clay, ceramic, wood or metal, with a small amount of liquid inside and topped with drum head consisting of a stretched membrane, usually of some type of animal hide.
The Mina drum is the largest of the drums that have origins in the Barlovento, Miranda region of Venezuela. They are used during the celebrations of St. John the Baptist and the Midsummer. It is a specialized form of the Cumaco drum. Its origins have been traced to the Mina civilization, which occupied what is now Benin in Africa.
Afro-Venezuelans are Venezuelans of African descent. About 4% of the Venezuelan population self-identify as "black" or "Afro-descendant", although most Venezuelans are mixed with African ancestry. Afro-Venezuelans are mostly descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the Western Hemisphere during the Atlantic slave trade. This term also sometimes refers to the combining of African and other cultural elements found in Venezuelan society such as the arts, traditions, music, religion, race, and language.
Barlovento is a sub-region of Miranda state, Venezuela. During Spanish colonization of the Americas, Barlovento was developed as estate owners founded cacao haciendas. The work on the estates was done by African slaves brought from what is now the Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola. These people were from the Kingdom of Kongo and Kingdom of Loango. There were also Yoruba slaves.
The term fulía refers to a variety of folk genres in Venezuela generally performed as part of the vigils of the Cruz de Mayo. Of these genres, there are two that are especially prominent: the fulía central and the fulía oriental or cumanesa.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
