#batadrum

I’ve decided to expand this blog from just the midi marimba to other DIY electronic percussion instruments I’m making. The first instrument I started with was actually a an electronic version of Afro-Cuban Batá drum, using electronic drum kit pads.

What are Batá drums?

I’m no expert by any means so I’m going to use some parts from the Wikipedia article:

“A Batá drum is a double-headed drum shaped like an hourglass with one end larger than the other. The percussion instrument is used primarily for the use of religious or semi-religious purposes for and originates from the native culture land of the Yoruba and the Igbo, located in Nigeria, as well as, but not of origin, by worshippers of Santería in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and in the United States. The Batá drum's popular functions are entertainment and to convey messages. Its early function was as a drum of different gods, drum of royalty, drum of ancestors and drum of politicians. Batá drum impacted on all spheres of life in Yoruba land.”

Batá drums are made in sets of specific sizes.

                                             Nigerian Batá set

Batá drums were brought to Cuba by enslaved African people during the transatlantic slave trade “in which close to 300,000 Africans were brought to Cuba”. Initially, they were only used for religious purposes in the religion that developed there, known as Santería, Regla de Ocha, or Lukumí.

“Santería developed among Afro-Cuban communities amid the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries. It formed through the blending of the traditional religions brought to Cuba by enslaved West Africans, the majority of them Yoruba, and the Roman Catholic teachings of the Spanish colonialists who controlled the island.”

Over time, Batá begun to be used in a secular context, outside of the religion.

“The Batá slowly became inducted into the Cuban culture after a time, and began to take on more secular uses: they were first publicly performed in 1935 in a broadcast over Cuban radio for purposes of folklore music. Uses such as this have grown as knowledge of the instrument has spread; more and more musicians not currently practising Lukumí have used versions of the drums in recordings or performances. These "non-sacred" Batá drums are called aberínkula—profane Batá (see Sacred-profane dichotomy). Batá drums and rhythms have started to be used in other genres, most notably in Cuban timba, jazz and hip hop. In the 1970s, for instance, a mixture of Batá drums and Big Band called Son-Batá or Batá Rock became popular, a genre highly influenced by Irakere.”

Afro-Cuban Batá are made in sets of three - the “Iyá, the largest, is referred to as "mother drum". Itótele, the middle one or “father”, and Okónkolo, the smallest or “baby”. These drums are traditionally always played together in a ‘family’, by three separate players. Sacred Cuban Batá, which are used for religious purposes, have been specially consecrated and can only be played by initiates of the religion. These can’t use a metal tuning system, like the modern tuning systems on conga drums pioneered by Patato, so they’re made with a rope-style tuning to tension the skins.

Secular Cuban Batá can be made the same way, or with metal lugs for tuning, but the important difference is that they haven’t been consecrated.

Overall these instruments are not very common, but are made by custom makers as well as by the major Latin percussion brands - Latin Percussion, Meinl, Toca, Pearl etc. 

In secular music contexts, some players play all three drums at once on a stand, playing as many of the parts of the rhythms as they can.

What do they sound like?

Here’s an example from Nigeria: 

Here’s an example from Cuba in a religious context: 

And here’s an example from Cuba in a secular context from the great band Irakere!

And a more recent one by (U)nity with Pedrito Martinez on Batá

My interest and introduction:

I remember the first time I heard Batá drums, I was on exchange at San Francisco State University, and I was lucky enough to play in the esteemed Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble, directed by John Calloway. One of the recordings he sent us to learn is a traditional religious song for the Orisha Elegua, from an album fusing Cuban, New Orleans and lots of other Afro-Latin styles.  I was struck by the beautiful sound of the drums and singing but also the complexity and interplay of the rhythms. I had no idea what was going on and had no idea what drum could possibly be making these sounds! The rhythms are truly hypnotic. Here is that clip: 

I travelled to Cuba in 2017, mainly to study congas, but I had a couple lessons on Batá - playing them separately and as a set, and while we were there we saw a couple of ceremonies as well where the Batá are played.  I also started learning more about the influence of the Batá in Cuban music, in conga playing, in rumba, and appreciating it’s role in the history and development of all this music that I love.

I recorded a quick test with the electro-batá set I’ve been working on, over some live drums I recorded. It’s all pretty rough playing wise but it does the job - the main thing I wanted to check is whether I could get the latency down enough to track parts with the Batá in time over a recording - and I’m pretty happy with the results!

I’ve been imagining this 6/8 pattern called Ñongo over a heavy backbeat groove, so I decided to try it out - it was a pretty hard one to play at the speed I choose so it was a challenge but a lot of fun as well!

For those playing at home, the drum track was required with just one mic, using the Zoom H2 in front of the kit, sitting on some boxes facing in towards the snare / hi-hat. The Bata was recording MIDI only, which then translates to samples.

Latency

So I was very happy with the latency - I played the part live over the drum track, using my speakers to hear the recording and the batá (an advantage of MIDI-recording since there’s no actual sound from the room) with a metronome, and it felt perfectly in time for me apart from my actual playing mistakes and my own time drifting.

The setup I was using was the ASIO4ALL driver, with a Sample Rate of 96kHz, and 64 samples, which Reaper estimated to have a delay of between 5.6-7.6ms. It wasn’t enough for me to notice!  All of this was still running through my legacy dd506 drum brain.

I don’t fully understand why the higher sample rate settings etc. made it better, but I had read to try this in several articles on reducing latency, and it certainly was much better than when I was trying at 44100 or 48kHz.

Set Design

In terms of the actual play-ability of the set, it was not bad. I could reach all of the drum heads which was pretty important since the pattern was so fast, it was at a good height that I wasn’t leaning down overly, and the width seemed to be good - shorter than what an acoustic set would be but quite comfortable. My main issues were still hitting the plastic rims of the drum pads, since they weren’t designed for playing with hands, and that the pads can sometimes move if they become loose on their mounting rods.

I could fix both of these issues by making my own pads, with no rims and a different mounting system, which is something I’m considering, but I’ll explore after some more testing.

I was also able to track the cowbell and shekere parts for the end of the video quite nicely, just setting up another track and assigning those samples to the right pads.

Sound

I was pretty happy with the sound - I think it blends well with acoustic drum sounds and sounds good, although there weren’t many dynamics because of how fast and roughly I was playing. It would be good to try a slower pace and try out more dynamics and some of the tapado notes.

Here’s a test just showing the range of samples I’m using - after doing this, I think I’m going to have to adjust some of the sensitivities.