Collective Difference: The Pan-American Association of Composers

Cowell’s world music class at the New School in 1934: “They used two guitars, but four
of them just played percussion: marimbula, cencerro, bongos, jawbone and all. It was
thrilling. The whole audience went wild about them. They weren’t even professional—
just happened to be in New York.” 24 The melding of U.S. and Afro-Cuban popular
musics in New York, leading to salsa and its related genres, has been well documented. 25
Bongos, cowbell, quijada, and other Cuban instruments left their mark on concert music,
as well. After hearing the Cuban musicians in Cowell’s seminar, Russell immediately
purchased a set of similar instruments in Harlem and began composing his Percussion
Studies in Cuban Rhythms. All three studies use only Afro-Caribbean percussion
instruments: güiro, cowbell, maracas, claves, quijada, bongos, and marimbula (a large
lamellophone in the form of a wooden box usually sat upon by the player). Each piece is
a study on an Afro-Caribbean genre and its characteristic rhythms. In no. 1, “Havanera,”
the habanera rhythm is the most prominent feature. It is also the simplest of the three
studies and represents Russell’s first attempt at experimentation with Afro-Cuban
rhythms and instruments. Each instrument enters the texture in succession, as shown in
Example 1.1.
24 Don Gillespie, “William Russell: American Percussion Composer” Southern Quarterly 36/2 (Winter
1998): 43.
25 See, for example, John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the
United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
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