{"id":12599,"date":"2025-11-20T22:48:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T03:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=12599"},"modified":"2025-11-20T23:15:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T04:15:02","slug":"tumbandero-videos-and-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2025\/11\/tumbandero-videos-and-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Tumbandero videos and gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a follow up to a previous post on tumbaderos<\/a> \u2014 a tumbandero is the washtub bass that’s played in the Caribbean and Central America \u2014 tumbandero player Axel D. Rodr\u00edguez sent links to some fabulous videos. If you’re interested in tumbanderos or washtub bass, you’ll be fascinated by these videos, both to hear the varied playing styles, and to see helpful visual cues for making your own instrument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you Axel! (Find Axel and his band on Spotify<\/a> \u2014 and on Youtube<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tingo Talango \u2014 Cuba 1<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 A must-watch video showing a musician building a Cuban version of the earth bow, called a \u201ctingo tualango\u201d or a \u201ctumbandero.\u201d The earth bow was the African instrument from which the washtub bass and the tumbandero are derived. Skip ahead to 2:50 to watch the building of the instrument, and then watch it being played both by plucking the single string, and playing rhythm on the soundboard. The musician frets the string rather than adjusting the tension on the bow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tingo Talango \u2014 Cuba 2<\/a> \u2014 A short video with someone playing the tingo talango.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandera or Kaolin \u2014 Cuba 3<\/a> \u2014 Another traditional Cuban earth bow. These musicians adjust the string tension by moving the bow, and get different notes. In the short demonstration of playing, it seems the instrument sometimes requires two musicians \u2014 one to play, and the other to adjust tension to keep the instrument on pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Screen grab from the 3rd Cuba video. You can clearly see the bow which provides tension for the string.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Quijongo Caribe\u00f1o \u2014 Costa Rica<\/a> \u2014 The visuals show some adults showing kids of about middle school age how to build an earth bow-derived instrument out of a wood box, a string, and a neck. (The audio isn\u2019t coordinated with the visuals.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Screen grab from the Costa Rica video. The kids are learning how to play the instruments they just made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Marengwen \u2014 Haiti<\/a> \u2014 An earth bow-type instrument, but the string tension is fixed, and pitch is altered by fretting. In addition, rather than plucking the string, the musicians strike the string with a stick. A must-watch video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Screen grab from the Haiti video. The stick used to hit the string is blurred in this image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana \u2014 Puerto Rico 1<\/a> \u2014 A band with a tumbandero made from a plastic five gallon bucket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana \u2014 Puerto Rico 2<\/a> \u2014 Tumbandero made from a plastic five gallon bucket. One musician playing along to a recording, with a good view of his playing technique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana \u2014 Puerto Rico 3<\/a> \u2014 The tumbandero player picks up his instrument at 0:15. This instrument appears to be metal and plastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana \u2014 Pureto Rico 4<\/a> \u2014 Tumbandero made with a plastic five gallon bucket. Once again, the tumbandero functions more like tuned percussion than a bass. You can hear the tumbandero from 0:00 to 2:45; and from 6:15 to the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Screen grab from the 4th Puerto Rico video. The tumbandero (at far left) is made out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana \u2014 Puerto Rico 5<\/a> \u2014 A Smithsonian Folkways recording. Great audio, no visuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana \u2014 Puerto Rico 6<\/a> \u2014 A tumbandero made out of a metal washtub. The tumbandero player explains his instrument as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWherever the African diaspora is, you are going to find some sort of instrument similar to this one. In the case of [the musical genre] la plena, it\u2019s an instrument that is complementary to the traditional panderetas [frame drums] and guiro [hollow gourd played with wire brush]. And it sounds close to a bass [in range]. But the pitch isn\u2019t perfect, so it\u2019s basically another percussive instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Screen grab from the 6th Puerto Rico video. This tumbandero, made from a metal washtub, looks like a classic American washtub bass.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Axel also sent some photos he found online \u2014 since I don’t know the source of them, and whether they’re copyrighted, I decided not to include them in this post. But if you do an image search for “tumbandero” you should turn up some interesting images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A final note: I really want to make the Costa Rican instrument. I like the sound of the wood, I like the looks of it, and it would be fun to make. But we don’t have room for such a large musical instrument in our tiny apartment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a follow up to a previous post on tumbaderos \u2014 a tumbandero is the washtub bass that’s played in the Caribbean and Central America \u2014 tumbandero player Axel D. Rodr\u00edguez sent links to some fabulous videos. If you’re interested in tumbanderos or washtub bass, you’ll be fascinated by these videos, both to hear the … Continue reading “Tumbandero videos and gallery”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[129,1189,1064],"class_list":["post-12599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musical-arts","tag-diy-chronicles","tag-tumbandero","tag-washtub-bass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12599"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12611,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599\/revisions\/12611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}