Candombe Memory: The Ansina Drum Line PART 2
Montevideo, January 2008,
Sergio Ortuño, a Candombe percussionist and professor of Afro Art and Culture, tells us about the drumming style of Ansina, a street in the historic Black neighborhood of Palermo, whose houses were demolished and residents evicted during the dictatorship in 1979.
A striking paradox: Candombe has never been played as much in Uruguay as it is today, and almost all drum groups claim to be part of this musical style. But the Tamboreros of Ansina, heirs to a long tradition, haven't met for about ten years.
Two days after our conversation with him, Sergio tells us that the Ansina drummers are going to reunite to play and that they have agreed to be filmed "to leave a record."
This film was born from the need to show and share this dense, warlike, and virtuosic style of drumming. He lets the music and words of the leading Tamboreros of the neighborhood resonate and captures the dialogue of the drums, the glances and the transmission, in which resides, as one of them says, the essence of candombe, "the living music of what we are".