Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Silvestre Mendez "Bembé Araguá" 1957, '58 - Cuba

"Bembé Araguá"
Silvestre Mendez
RCA Victor vinyl - 1957-'58
Never reissued
Ripped from the original vinyl LP.
"Cleaned" and "trimmed" with GoldWave v5.23

2. "Recuerdo A Roncona"

3. "Nañigo"

9. "Juventud Del Presente"



The classic Silvestre Mendez LP, "Bembé Aragua".
In my opinion, his best LP, other than his major participation on the "Mongo Drums And Chants" LP. which was supposed to be his LP, but somehow it was put out as a Mongo Santamaria LP, he sings on almost every song and the majority of the songs are Silvestre Mendez' compositions.

Bembé Aragua:
Silvestre Mendez: composed nine songs on this LP, sings lead vocals and plays the Quinto solo on "Recuerdo A Roncona" (on a tack head drum!).
Silvestre also plays an *Ékue drum for 7 seconds at the intro on the song "Nañigo".
The *Ékué drum is a friction drum, a sacred drum kept hidden behind a curtain inside the 'Fambá' (Abakúa temple).
The only other time I've ever heard an 'Ékue drum recorded on any LP is by the Cuban Jazz band 'Grupo Afro Cuba', on the song titled "En' Lloro Mi Nañkwe".


1 comment:

royzie41 said...

My teacher, Julito Collazo a famous Santeria drummer taught me about guaguanco. Larry Harlo, and Mark Weinstein were experts on religious and Latin music in general. I studied the music by watching Joe Cuba's band perform twice a week. Jimmy Sabater and Jose Feliciano were very helpful.In 1959 If one could play jazz and club date music,
and timbales, you could make some money.
Get in touch: roystoys@mac.com

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