Cuban Rhythms

Welcome to my educational Cuban music blog page.
The reason I am creating this blog is to make Cuban music accessible to people who's interested in Cuban music, but no clue how to approach the information.
I spent a lot of time to get just simple basic patterns for each styles.
If I could find these basic patters when I started to study Cuban music, I could spend more time to develop more advanced deep knowledge/technique for each styles.
I want other people to save their time and learn more profound aspect (Technically and spiritually) of Cuban music.
Also, when I go to some of Cuban music classes, I found that people don't have musical education at school have hard time to remember previous class's rhythm because they don't know how to write down (notate).
Since music (especially, Cuban music) is for everybody, all level musicians should be able to learn.
I will try to use videos and notation that is understandable to people who doesn't have "official" musical education.
I will try to add a new rhythm every month.
If you have comment or found mistakes, please let me know.
Click Here to my blog.

Bricamo (Brikamo)

In this blog, I will just show basic rhythms, but most important part of music (not only Cuban music) is singing part.
What I recommend for singing and rhythmic variation is take classes.
Also, it is very important to play with other people for this kind of music.

I want to start with a rhythm called Bricamo (Brikamo).
This rhythm is a sister rhythm of Abakua (Abakuwa).
Abakua is for male society, but Bricamo is for female society.
Rhythm  and instrumentation are similar to Abakua, but Bell pattern is a little tricky.

		1			2			1			2
Ekon (Bell) 6/8		X	X	.	X	X	X	.	X	X	X	.	X

The bell phrase start with last note of the phrase (X).

		1			2			1			2
Erikundi (Cata) 6/8	R	X	.	.	X	.	.	X	.	.	X	.	.
	L	X	.	X	.	.	X	.	X	.	X	.	.

They use three drums

		1			2			1			2
Kuchi Yerema 6/8		B	.	O	O	.	.	B	.	O	O	.	.
(High drum)		R		R	R			R		R	R

1 2 1 2 Obiapa 6/8 . M . . O . . M . . O . (Lower Drum) R R R R

The third drum (Bonko Enchemiya) improvise.

 *Notation note
   -Number 1 and 2 are basic pulse. When you practice, tap you feet 1 and 2 as a guideline even though Cubans might not count like this.
   -X for bell is just simply hit the bell with stick.
   -. is rest (no sound).
   - R and L. R means play with right hand. L is left hand.
   -B is bass.
   -O is open tone.
   -M is Muff.

Please check my Youtube demonstration.

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