THE CONGA DRUM - Part III: Ramon 'Mongo' Santamaria's Contribution

by Alex Pertout

This is the third in a series of three articles based on excerpts from my thesis titled The Conga Drum: Development, Technique, Styles, Improvisations and the contribution of Master Drummer Ramon ‘Mongo’ Santamaria, for which I was awarded a Master of Philosophy in Music Degree at the Australian National University (ANU).

Ramon ‘Mongo’ Santamaria was born in Havana, Cuba, on the 7th of April, 1917. He grew up in the Jesus Maria district, a working class neighbourhood in Havana with deep African roots. His grandfather was African and although he died when Santamaria was very young, family members remember him as a happy man, always singing and dancing. They also recall that he knew much about Congolese culture.[1] He was brought up by his mother as his father died young, and received the nickname ‘Mongo’ which he later learned meant ‘chief of the tribe’.[2] In pre-Castro Cuba, Santamaria worked in all major nightclubs, places such as the famous Tropicana as well in countless other settings. He took part in a dance review show called Congo Pantera which also included Silvestre Mendez and Chano Pozo,[3] before heading for Mexico in the late 1940s to join an ensemble of dancers and musicians led by Pablito Duarte.[4] The ensemble called Pablito y Linon, which also included his long time friend and colleague Armando Peraza, then travelled to the USA where Santamaria witnessed the success of Chano Pozo, the legendary Cuban conga player who migrated to the USA and had a brief but remarkable career playing with Dizzy Gillespie. As Santamaria recalled Pozo’s success “gave me the idea that I could also perhaps one day arrive at the same pinnacle that he had arrived at.”[5] Fig.1. Ramon ‘Mongo’ Santamaria.[6]

Portrait of Ramon 'Mongo' Santamaria with congas drums

Soon after making the move to the USA he joined Perez Prado's Orchestra enjoying enormous success during the ‘mambo era’ of the early 1950s. He then worked extensively with Tito Puente, highlights include his participation on two memorable percussion based albums: 'Top Percussion' and 'Tito in Percussion'. He left Puente in 1957 to join Cal Tjader's quintet in California. This move was to prove extremely important for Santamaria, as he was keen to expand his musical expertise and to perform to concert audiences. “More people knew me after only three months with Cal Tjader, then in the previous seven years with Tito Puente, with Tito we use to play in places like the Coborojeño and the Palladium, we played, played and played and nothing happened, but when I joined Cal Tjader in California we were playing concerts in front of 10,000 people.”[7]

After leaving Tjader, he started his career as bandleader with his charanga band La Sabrosa, which laid some of the foundations for the now popular salsa style. In 1963 while recording the Herbie Hancock tune 'Watermelon Man', he coloured his sound with a rhythm and blues tinge and had a hit on the pop charts. The tune reached the Billboard Top Ten Hit list, it was the first major Latin crossover pop hit.[8] Santamaria remembers that soon after he commenced his Latin-jazz ensemble he had a hit. “I had the good fortune of having a hit single with 'Watermelon Man' which sold over a million records and even today wherever I go I always have to play it.[9] According to author Nat Chediak the piece also made conga drums a part of pop music in the USA.[10] Santamaria often said that the beauty of his congadrumming was in the feeling of ‘skin on skin’, as Kathy Liner noted it was Santamaria’s way of expressing the drum being an extension of himself, his vehicle for self expression.[11]

He recorded his first percussion based album 'Chango' in 1955 (later re-issued as 'Drums and Chants'), and followed that with releases such as 'Yambu', 'Mongo', 'Our Man In Havana', 'Bembe' and 'Up From the Roots'. These recordings continue to inspire generations. Accordingly noted drummer, bandleader and educator Bobby Sanabria states “the licks that Mongo played are seared in my head and in the head of every drummer who plays Cuban music.”[12] Santamaria recorded more than seventy albums as leader, and was signed at one time or another to some of the most prestigious record companies in the world including Fantasy, Columbia, Atlantic, Concord, Riverside, Milestones and Fania. He received five Grammy Award nominations and in 1997 his album 'Dawn' (Amanecer) was awarded the Grammy for Best Latin Recording.

Santamaria was one of the finest individuals to grace the world of percussion, and as far as conga drum playing, arguably the most influential. “No one did more to elevate the status of the tumbadora and the tumbador than Don Mongo, we are greatly indebted to him,” percussionist and historian John Santos wrote.[13] Players of many generations and of wide cultural backgrounds worldwide always make a mention of Santamaria's profound influence. “I don't think there is much argument that Mongo Santamaria is probably the most influential conga player, I don't see how anybody could be more so,” Santos stated “some of the greatest recordings of that kind of music and that kind of drumming are by Mongo.”[14] Bassist Ruben Rodriguez certainly acknowledges this but also broadens the depth of Santamaria’s enormous influence adding “I think he really made his mark was in being a band leader. He took Latin music to the next level commercially speaking. Others did it as well, but he did it with an ensemble not an orchestra. I feel he was the first real ‘crossover’ artist, way before Santana!”[15] When asked how he wanted to be remembered Santamaria simply said “for my music, my sound, my creativity.”[16] He left Cuba determined to make a mark in the international music scene, something he achieved in his lifetime. Ramon 'Mongo' Santamaria died in Miami, Florida on the 2nd of February 2003.

Ramon ‘Mongo’ Santamaria possessed a personal sound on the conga drum which one can easily identify on recordings. He was not known so much for his technical prowess but rather for his sound, as Santos observed “his legacy to me is not coming from the technique, Mongo was a hard hitting player with a beautiful sound, he came from an open hard hitting style.”[17] According to Sanabria, a member of Santamaria’s band in the 1980s, Santamaria’s approach was extremely physical, always hitting the skins with extreme force. He told Sanabria that he wanted his muffled slap, the time keeping slap when playing tumbao, to “sound like a gunshot.” The following are a couple of examples of Santamaria’s technique, beginning with his style in playing the basic congadrum rhythm known as tumbao. According to Sanabria his tumbao playing “was powerful and very authoritative. In his prime he could really drive a band,” Sanabria added “Mongo also applied a lot of the vocabulary of the bongo to the conga in terms of keeping time and doing repiques (improvisations) within the structure of the tumbao.”[18] The tumbao rhythm incorporates the playing of two open tones and a muffled slap with the right hand, with the flowing motion of the left hand palm-fingers movement, which keeps the rhythm flowing. In this performance Santamaria incorporates three conga drums. He sits and holds the smallest and highest pitched drum in front of him, the middle drum is to his left, while the lowest drum sits to his right. The tuning from the lowest to the highest drum consists of: an A, a B (tone up) and a D (a minor third up). These transcriptions of his playing come from a video of a live performance of 'A Mi No Me Engañan' by Santamaria and his ensemble at the jazz club Quasimodo in Berlin, Germany. It is a privately made video recordingof the performance, with the camera only a few metres in front of Santamaria and his three conga drums. The camera angle stays focused on Santamaria throughout. [19]

The following nomenclature has been designed to accommodate the musical examples presented in this article. The three conga drums occupy the first, second and third spaces of the music stave. Each particular drum sound initial is on top of each note played, while underneath each note you will find the right or left hand ‘sticking’, as played by Santamaria.

Ex. 1. Conga drum nomenclature.

Example 2 displays a Santamaria tumbao variation. In this example he replaces the fingers that follow the muffled slap in the first bar with an open tone on the highest pitched drum, followed by another open tone on the drum to his left. The next two open tones at the end of the first bar are then played on two drums. On the second bar he follows the muffled slap with an open tone on the highest pitched drum, followed by another open tone, this time placing that sound on the lowest drum to his right. The last two open tones also played on two different drums.

Ex. 2. Santamaria’s tumbao variations.[20]

Musical score of Ramon 'Mongo' Santamaria's conga drum tumbao pattern

The following four-bar segment presented in example 3, showcases the tumbao with a long variation incorporating eighth note triplets. Santamaria often incorporates phrases changing from duple to triple time, giving the listener a sense of moving into an Afro 6/8 rhythm. The variation concludes with the two open tones at the end of bar three. Santamaria approaches the triplet cell with a sticking comprising of a double right and a single left stroke. This segment ends with a minor sixteenth note variation, at the end of the fourth bar over three drums.

Ex. 3. Santamaria’s tumbao variations with fill.[21]