Raul Fernandez is so good, he makes playing the cajón look easy. A professional musician and percussion instructor, Fernandez flows easily from one rhythmic pattern and instrument to the next. He can monitor a crowd of students learning a new technique, sing in English and Spanish, play guitar and keep the beat with an instrument at his foot – all at the same time. However, among many other lessons, my first percussive experience taught me that playing the cajón is not as easy as Fernandez makes it look.
Like many of the arts taught and performed at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, the cajón fits into a long tradition of culturally diverse music created for music’s sake. The school offers classes and workshops for students of all ages, using instruments that range from the accordion to the ukulele. The Old Town School operates out of two main locations in Chicago, with additional classes held at branch locations in Evanston and Western Springs. With performances by both professional touring and local artists, as well as a music festival in the summer, the Old Town School gives folk music a voice in the city. In fact, this year they’ll celebrate 50 years of making the practice of folk music accessible to the Chicago community.
It’s apparent upon entering the school that the organization has kept to its goal of making students and teachers “partners in learning.” As I made my way through the crowd in the entrance, I could not distinguish between instructor and student, nor between professional and beginner. I followed the sound of the cajón past classes in music and dance to the gallery where my workshop was already in session.
The name cajón – Spanish for box – describes the instrument accurately. To play cajóns, musicians sit on top of the rectangular drum and reach down to hit the front between their knees. Fernandez includes various rhythmic patterns in his beginner lessons to show students that the instrument is quite versatile, capable of accompanying various styles of music from samba to reggaeton and even rock ‘n’ roll.
The Afro-Peruvian slaves who originated the instrument made much out of this basic box-drum concept. With a hole in the back and screws to adjust the sound, the cajón can produce both a low and a high tone. Sometimes the drums have strings behind the frontpiece which create a buzzing sound when the drum is struck. The combination of these sounds creates the varied and complex rhythms most commonly heard behind various Cuban, Peruvian and other Latin American musical genres.
To kick off our workshop – aimed at beginners to the cajón – my two classmates and I started learning the basics: the high notes at the top of the drum, and the low notes right below. We sat in a line, with our instructor between us, so that we could watch his left and right hand bang out the notes and patterns. By the end of the 90-minute workshop, I had lost the compas too many times to count, but had applied beats to samba and Rumba Flamenco, Western music in 3/4 time and African music in 6/8 time. Fernandez broke the rhythm patterns into parts to help us memorize them and understand the ways the music fits together.
In the middle of the session, as we broke to nurse our swelling hands, Fernandez demonstrated some percussion instruments made from natural materials. Turtle and conch shells, and even the skeleton of a horse jaw, became music makers. The teeth rattling in the horse jaw and the clicking of the bones demonstrated the power of traditional music to transcend any lack of resources. He traced the roots of the cajón back to slaves in the Americas, and talked about the importance of making music across genres.
Fernandez says his reason for pushing the school to offer and promote classes in the cajón, even though it is not one of the most commonly considered folk instruments in the United States, is that it can function within so many types of music. He hopes that students who take his classes will continue their craft, applying it to whatever type of music they love to listen to or perform. For example, when one of my classmates said that he listened primarily to rock ‘n’ roll, Fernandez responded by leading our cajón-trio in a percussive rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” while he played and sang with his guitar.
After my workshop at Old Town, I will never be able to look at a box the same way again. I am impressed with the history of the instrument, the versatility of its sound, and, in true beginning-drum-student style, my fingers are still a little swollen – in the best way possible.
