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Thoughts on the cajón
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Kevin Cloud
Posts: 7
Joined: Jul. 18 2012
From: Berkeley, California
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 Thoughts on the cajón
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Hola Flamencos!
I make master-quality cajones in Berkeley, California. Luthier Stephen Faulk suggested I join the foro and share a little about my instruments and cajones in general... I've looked around the forums a little and I wish I'd been around when some of the earlier cajon conversations were happening!
I've been studying and building cajones since 2006, inspired by my friend John Martin lll of Cerro Negro. After decades as a musician and a fine woodworker, and a few years building Celtic harps with Chris Caswell, I still had to build about 15 before I started to feel happy with the results. Since then I've made and sold about 150, and at this point I believe there is no finer high-end modern-style cajón than a Berkeley Box... www.berkeleyboxworks.com ...The only others that are close, IMO, are Patrick Oliver's popercussion out of Germany, but Schlagwerks is pretty good (also German) and Gon Bops and Fat Congas are coming along ;-)
That said, though I love flamenco and have many friends in the flamenco world, I am not a flamenco and I don't (yet) build instruments in the modern flamenco style a la Mario Cortés. But here's most of what I know about the instrument:
The cajón comes from 1820s Peru originally but modern instruments have evolved greatly. There are 3 or 4 main styles: Peruano, Flamenco, and Modern, with various permutations of each. I'm leaving the cajón Cubano out of this discussion as it's a fundamentally different instrument.
The original Peruano style instrument has a very solid five-sided wooden shell ie top, bottom, sides, and back, with a thinner head on the front and soundhole at the back. The classic style has a fully glued head and does not have snares. A varient emulates a snare sound by attaching the playing head very loosely with screws, producing a rattling sound. Both these instruments have very little presence in the bass and are generally pretty dead-sounding: they have to be pummelled pretty hard to get any kind of rich sounds out of them, and the classic style in particular is really only popular for traditional Afro-Peruvian music, which after all has evolved with this cajon at its heart. The most modern variant is a sort of junky mass-produced box with cheaply-engineered snare-wires or snares made from metal combs. In my opinion these sound terrible, but YMMV ;-)
The Spanish flamenco style uses guitar strings inside the instrument for snares, and the single playing head is usually glued to the 5-sided shell, sound-hole is still at the back... it is built very lightly with the shell of 7-9mm plywood and an internal frame, and has not much bass tone, but the very dry sounds fit nicely into flamenco orchestration. Mario Cortés is the best known maker of this style, which, as I've said, has a pretty dry sound, and generally won't get loud unless you really pound on it. People will talk about the Flamenco tradition of cajón, but cajón has only been used in Flamenco since about 1980 so it's a pretty slim tradition... of course, people have been drumming on boxes ever since the box was invented ;-)
What I'm calling the 'modern' style is like the Flamenco style but built more solidly, with a 12mm 4-sided shell, two glued heads and the sound hole on one side. The glued heads (front and back) couple acoustically for a powerful bass tone, and the snares are usually a bit more 'engineered'. My instruments (and Patrick's) are designed to be super-responsive to finger-tip playing, allowing a wide pallette of very rich tones even at very low volume. Again, mine are literally the best you can get, and go for around $4-500 US... after me Patrick's popercussion makes the best, and Schlagwerks are pretty decent.
"Modern" style is great for all styles of music and perfectly good for flamenco, but because of how responsive these instruments are it's VERY easy for an over-enthusiastic player to overwhelm the orchestration. Jason McGuire played a few of my boxes a couple of years ago and made the valuable comment that he especially liked the baritone ergo-box because the low-end 'boom' is BELOW the guitar and thus doesn't conflict :-) Likewise, apropos of the thread "Is Cajon for guitar players?", in which user rodrigovalt wondered if playing the cajón would mess up his hands, the modern-style, because of its responsiveness, is fine for guitar players as the movements and impacts are probably actually less violent than right-hand flamenco technique or palmas ;-)
One last word about the cajón business: in about 2006 a large German manufacturer of cymbals and drum-hardware whose name rhymes with 'spinal' suddenly flooded the market with cheap cajones that sound terrible and were built because their accountants recognized a market. Many people have bought these instruments, and because of the randomness of mass-production a small percentage of them actually sound kind of good, but noone would really consider them a 'fine instrument'. Likewise other manufacturers whose names rhyme with 'chemo', 'hurl', and 'kelpee': big businesses that figured they should get a piece of the action. A number of them are now offering 'signature' models from Spanish cajoneros which are somewhat better, but all are still made in factories by worker-drones. OTOH, Schlagwerks, Popercussion, Berkeley Boxworks, and some other businesses were created by cajoneros, real instrument-makers who want to build cajones, and an instrument built by a person who cares about it will be better, as all you guitarists know :-) ...plus, of course, giving your $$ to instrument-makers is better than giving it to shareholders!
I hope this is helpful, and I haven't broken any forum rules with it, long as it is. I love the cajón and I love flamenco! best wishes to all,
-kc
www.berkeleyboxworks.com
www.facebook.com/berkeley.boxworks.cajon.drums.plus
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 4 2012 1:21:04
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Kevin Cloud
Posts: 7
Joined: Jul. 18 2012
From: Berkeley, California
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RE: Thoughts on the cajón (in reply to Kevin Cloud)
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Hi Guys, thanks for the good feedback and good question :-)
I play mostly middle-eastern music, mostly on the oud, and I have a lot of appreciation for both "the drummer problem" and the importance of preserving and extending clean traditions and preventing them from being displaced by 'innovation'. Just remember: drums don't kill sessions, drummers do ;-)
I'm sorry if anything I said sounded arrogant. I have played hundreds of cajones from scores of makers and feel somewhat qualified to comment on cajones in general, but I'm not expert about the Peruano or Flamenco-style instruments, only this type I've been calling "modern" but which I think I should start calling "Doble" for the double heads. The Doble-style instruments are a fairly new development and not that many people are making them. Among them, as far as I am aware, Patrick's and mine are the best, and many cajon-players have told me so.
I like the Doble-style better than the others because with adjustments to tuning and technique it can produce all the sounds of the Peruano OR the Flamenco-style and more, and, as I said, is super-responsive to finger-tip playing, allowing a wide pallette of very rich tones even at very low volume.
I haven't disparaged any 'true' cajoneros, but really, there are a lot of very crappy cajones out there and I do resent these large manufacturing-concerns that have flooded the market. If the Fender company suddenly flooded the market with thousands of $400 'Flamenco' guitars made in southeast-asian factories, I imagine some guitarreros would feel the same ;-)
Deniz, you asked a great question that I'm still thinking about: I'll try to give you my best answers in a day or two.
Thanks again, guys!
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 5 2012 8:30:07
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