“When you talk about percussion, particularly the evolution of conga playing, you’re talking about two periods — before Cándido and after Cándido,” the Grammy-nominated percussionist and bandleader Bobby Sanabria said on Friday, having just attended a memorial service for Cándido Camero. He played multiple conga drums simultaneously, something new at the time, and introduced other innovations as he performed with top names like Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton. “He was the first to develop the techniques to play multiple percussion instruments simultaneously, sounding like three or four players. He was the first to tune multiple congas to specific pitches so he could play melodies on them, and he was an inventor as well. In 1950 he created the first device for a player to be able to play a cowbell with one’s foot.”

Source: New York Times November 22, 2020 17:03 UTC