the.com/bongo
Two drums, no sticks, all hands — Cuba's heartbeat strapped between your knees
means A pair of small, open-bottomed hand drums of different sizes, joined together and played by tapping with the fingers and palms.
from From Cuban Spanish 'bongó,' which most likely came into the language from a West or Central African source carried over during the Atlantic slave trade — the exact root word is uncertain, but the instrument and its name took shape in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century, where Afro-Cuban music gave the world the bongó alongside the conga and the rumba.
- Origin
- Born in eastern Cuba around the 1900s
- Two sizes
- Macho is small, hembra is big
- Also animal
- A striped African antelope shares the name
- Skin tuning
- Players heat heads near flame to sharpen pitch
- Beatnik fuel
- Powered countless smoky 1950s poetry readings
bongo antelope — large forest antelope found in central africa with distinctive striped coat
bongo explosion — infamous 1958 incident in new york where a bongo drum caused a fire during a party