Cándido Camero Guerra (22April 1921 – 7November 2020), known simply as Cándido, was a Cuban conga and bongo player. He is considered a pioneer of Afro-Cuban jazz and an innovator in conga drumming.[1] He was responsible for the embracing of the tuneable conga drum, the first to play multiple congas developing the techniques that all players use today, as well as the combination of congas, bongos, and other instruments such as the foot-operatedcowbell, an attached guiro, all played by just one person. Thus he is the creator of the multiple percussion set-up.[1]
Cándido Camero Guerra was born in the barrio known as El Cerro, in Havana, to Caridad Guerra and Cándido Camero.[1][2][3] His interest in music began at the age of 4, when his maternal uncle Andrés, a professional bongosero for the Septeto Segundo Nacional, taught him to play bongos on condensed milk cans.[1][4] At a very young age, he moved with his family to Cerro, a neighborhood in Havana.[3] Camero's father taught him how to play the tres, a type of Cuban guitar.[3] While focusing on the tres, he also learned to play bass and percussion, mostly bongo and conga. In 1935, at the age of 14, Camero began to play tres professionally for various son ensembles such as Gloria Habanera, Sonora Piñón and Conjunto Segundo de Arsenio Rodríguez (Arsenio's backup band).[3] The increasing popularity of the conga drums—promoted primarily by Arsenio's conjunto—and the fact that Camero could not read sheet music, led him to switch to the conga, which became his primary instrument,[1][5] although he would also record with other percussion instruments, especially the bongó.
Early in his career, Camero played as conguero and bongosero for the Cuban radio stations Radio Progresso and Radio CMQ (for 6 years) and for the Tropicana Club (also for 6 years).[1][6] As a tresero, he was also a member of Chano Pozo's Conjunto Azul, where he met Mongo Santamaría, who then played bongos.[1] He moved to New York City in 1946, after first arriving in the city on a tour.[1][6][5] He first performed in New York in the musical revue Tidbits at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway in 1946 backing up the Cuban dance team of Carmen and Rolando.[1]
At the Tidbits show, Camero pioneered the playing of two conga drums simultaneously. In a traditional context in the Cuban rumba and conga line carnaval processional music, multiple drummers play a single conga.[1] Camero would be the first to develop the technique to play various parts that originally individual single players would play in a group. He would recreate this by playing the various parts himself on multiple tuned drums. He also demonstrated to audiences for the first time the remarkable ability to play a steady rhythm with one hand while being able to improvise freely with the other. Thus he became the first to apply the technique of co-ordinated independence to the conga drums. He would later apply the technique to multiple percussion setups he would devise. For example expanding the number of congas to three or more combining them with other instruments such as the bongó.[1] and inventing a foot-operated cowbell and a mountable guiro.[1] These innovations and techniques were later adapted by other musicians leading to the manufacturer of various apparatuses to facilitate more expansive setups. His being the first to play multiple congas was quickly adapted by several of his fellow countryman like Carlos "Patato" Valdés and became the norm giving rise to the standard set of tuneable congas that are commonly used today. In 1957 he was also the first to champion the use of the fiberglass conga drum when he began playing publicly fiberglass drums made for him by New York City based Puerto Rican artisan and boat builder Frank Mesa. [7]
In 1948, he made his first U.S. recording with Machito and His Afro-Cubans on the tune "El Rey del Mambo", but he did not become a member of the band, since they already had Carlos Vidal Bolado on congas. When Chano Pozo was murdered in 1948 (he arrived in New York shortly after Cándido), Dizzy Gillespie contacted Camero and they began a fruitful collaboration that culminated in the 1954 recording of Afro.[1][8] Camero was also a member of the Billy Taylor Trio, with whom he recorded in 1953–54, and in 1954 he performed and recorded with Stan Kenton.[9][10] As one of the best known congueros in the U.S., Camero performed on variety shows such as The Jackie Gleason Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.[4]
Camero recorded several albums as a leader for ABC-Paramount in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the early 1970s, he recorded for the independent jazz label Blue Note Records, before joining the dance music record company Salsoul. With the latter, Camero recorded two albums which were relatively successful and remain in rotation by DJs in the U.S. In 1979, he released Jingo, a disco-oriented track written by Babatunde Olatunji and recorded on Salsoul Records; but released in the UK by EMI under the Salsoul Label as the B side to "Dancing and Prancing" as the A side. This track was also released as a 12" single in June, 1981 in the UK on the Excalibur Record label / PRT Precision Records and Tape, running for over 9 minutes, and reached #55 in the BBC Top 75 chart. "Jingo" was his most successful hit in the UK discos and clubs becoming a huge floor filler at that time and ever since as it has been covered by various artists since.[1][11] In the 2000s, Camero was a member of the Conga Kings alongside Patato and Giovanni Hidalgo. They recorded two albums for Chesky. He recorded another album for Chesky in 2004, Inolvidable, with Graciela, the long-time lead singer for Machito. This album earned a Grammy Award nomination.[12] In 2014, Camero recorded his last album, The Master, also for Chesky. He continued to perform in jazz clubs in New York until the late 2010s.[1]
^Quinn, Mike (1 November 2000). "Carlos "Patato" Valdés". Jazz Times. 30 (6–10): 22. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
Media related to Candido Camero at Wikimedia Commons
