Clave patterns in Uruguayan candombe drumming

Abstract

The concept of “timeline” is essential in understanding and analysing the rhythmic organization of the music of Africa and the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Like other musics of the Afro-Atlantic world, candombe drumming is timeline-based, and its timeline pattern–called madera or, in analogy to Afro-Cuban music, clave–has many traits in common with similar patterns in Afro-American music, like the son clave. The rhythm is produced by groups of drums of three different sizes, played with one hand hitting the drumhead bare and the other holding a stick. The stick is also used to hit the wooden shell of the drum, producing a sound called madera, when playing the timeline pattern. The way the madera pattern operates in the candombe rhythm, however, presents interesting differences with the more common uses of timeline patterns in other musics of the same tradition. For instance, instead of a single timeline pattern as in other Afro-Latin-American musics, the clave pattern in candombe allows for several different types and variants. In this paper, music information retrieval techniques are applied to a database of candombe recordings, in order to analyse the characteristics of the madera pattern, and how it is integrated in the rhythm. The rhythm cycles in a given recording where the madera pattern is played are identified, using automatic onset detection and sound classification based on spectral timbre features. After that, all the rhythm cycles collected from the database are clustered according to their similarity. Thus, each group represents a different way of playing the clave pattern, which are then analysed and compared to the ones reported in the existing musicological literature about candombe.