112 BPM
Drums
Bass
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4/4
Drag rhythmic values into up to 4 beat blocks per line to build a drum groove, or click a tile then click a block to place it — handy on a trackpad.
Cuba's music rests on clave — a two-bar pattern of five strokes that everything else lines up with — and on rhythms carried from West Africa by enslaved people and kept alive in ceremony and in the street. Son montuno, from eastern Cuba, put the clave, the conga's tumbao and the anticipated bass together, and is the root of salsa.
Guaguancó is a rumba: voices and three conga drums in conversation over the rumba clave. Bembé is a sacred 6/8 rhythm led by a bell pattern, and in the 20th century bandleaders built new grooves on these roots — Mozambique in the 1960s and songo in the 1970s, which brought the drum kit into Cuban dance music.
Want to play along, or build a song from these? Open them in Drum Loops → Each beat becomes a loop you can edit, with fills, a count-in and a song.