From Andrés:
“The Uruguayan style of music and dance known as candombe is
based around three different drums: chico, repique, and piano
drums. The chico is the loudest and highest pitched, and typically
follows a rhythmic pattern like this one:
Which made me think that it might sound good with this fragment
from Bach’s prelude:
Then came the idea to try the clave de candombe over the first part of the prelude. So I tried, marking the downbeat with my foot, and found that it fit ‘like magic.’ A lovely polyrhythm comes together between the eighth note figures of the prelude and the sixteenth note syncopation from the clave de candombe:
The rest was a matter of playing around and mixing those two musical ideas that Bach develops throughout the prelude, with a track of candombe that can be downloaded from YouTube on the “playalongdrums” channel—which I recommend for experimenting with different rhythms and exploring other unusual combinations!”
Learn more about Andrés Pilar
