NAMM 2007 Part Deux - Cajons, Warlords, and Spiral Trash

With the hum and throb of NAMM now fallen silent, all the over-caffeinated babble is fading away. What stays with me are the images and sounds of those handmade instruments simple in concept and elegant in their execution.

Musical instruments don’t come much more basic than the cajon – the Spanish word for box. This cajon is indeed a simple wooden box, yet can produce a range of drum set-like tones perfect for playing dynamically at a lower volume levels. The instrument has been used for decades in traditional music from Cuban to Afro-Peruvian to Spanish flamenco. It’s easy to see why the cajon has caught fire and sells like cold beer at a chili-eating contest—they’re inexpensive, beautiful, and they're great for acoustic gigs (and electric as well when they're miked up).

The player sits on the cajon and strikes the front surface. Playing toward the center of the cajon with the palm produces deep kick drum-like sounds. The top edges are attached with screws that can be loosened to allow hard-cutting slap tones. In the hands of a master drummer like Alex Acuna or Luis Conte, the cajon really speaks. To the right is a picture of Leon Mobley, percussionist with Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, getting down on the cajon.

It’s said that if you take conga lessons from the legendary congero Poncho Sanchez, you must pay your dues by first playing the hand-toughening cajon for weeks before you're allowed to touch a conga.

Innovative percussion manufacturers like Meinl have taken the humble cajon to new heights, with models that feature foot pedal-adjustable internal snare wires, an electronic pickup, exotic woods, synthetic front plates, padded seats, and a variety of natural and painted finishes.TAMA’s Warlord Limited Exotix Drum Set is made of bubinga wood, with an outer ply of quilted bubinga in African twilight that gives these drums striking eye appeal. The Warlords sound big and warm, with a sonic character somewhere between maple and birch.

Special effects cymbals were another hot item at NAMM. Zildjian brought it with their A Custom EFX and Spiral Trash cymbals. The A Custom EFX looks rather UFO-like with it's laser cut-outs, and has a Chinese cymbal-like vocabulary of dark, trashy sounds. The Zildjian Spiral Trash looks like the offspring of a cymbal and a slinky, and produces an intriguing spectrum of metallic effects.