LP Latin Percussion Flex-a-Tone Standard LP1-5

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Like on Burning Spear albums from roughly the same period, a wide variety of percussion (drums and idiophones) tends to be used on several songs, but softer in the mix than in Burning Spear albums: a bit more emphasis on the “driving bass and drum” – somewhat understandable - , requiring therefore closer inspection to distinguish percussion sounds. If using the instrument with the balls removed, indicate strikes with single notes followed by arrows indicating the direction of the glissando (similar to a guitar tab pitch bend). I am playing now for several years several percussion instruments, having started with serious lessons first in playing membranophones – or simpler said: hand drums – of Afro-Cuban origin: the well known Bongos and Conga. Glissando, said of the Flexatone sound, means in “Italianized French” nothing else than “gliding”, by the way. On the Itals’ songs I mention (from the 1985 Rasta Philosophy album), the Flexatone is used by veteran percussionists – as on other of the examples I mention - Scully and Bongo Herman, but somewhat buried in the mix, or at least along with quite some other percussion instruments.

Hector Lewis played along in this concert, with a wide percussion set (“Afro-Cuban basic”: three conga’s, bongos, and further various idiophones). Subsequently, the history of the flexatone became remarkable after it was patented in New York in the year 1924. Its melodic possibilities are less used or explored, though tension-building, semi-melodies are heard, mostly when introducing song parts like choruses and bridges.The metal plate of the flexatone is hit alternatively on each side by wooden or rubber beaters or balls that are attached to a clock spring. Vibes generally make a perfectly acceptable alternative, especially when the music is somewhat indeterminate anyway.

I am pleased to notice, anyway, that the younger percussionists in current Jamaican music, continue the varied percussion (drums and idiophones) use of their veteran predecessors since the 1970s, like Uzziah “Sticky” Thompson, Noel “Scully” Simms, Bongo Herman (Davis) and others. Percussion is still somewhat “drowned” in the relatively “fuller” sound of these Burning Spear albums (relatively many instruments used, percussion and otherwise). The use of this instrument allows a modulation of the sound and a rhythmic approach much more varied than on a classic flexatone it seems to me . To be precise, the Flexatone is as percussion instrument an “indirectly struck idiophone”, as Wikipedia also puts it.

Vivian Fine owned a flexatone, [31] and used flexatone music in compositions such as The Race of Life (1937). I aim to comment on and discuss several topics and phenomena I'm interested or specialized in (see underneath for more information). The only way to examine this is by listening, because hardly ever are separate, specific percussion instruments used mentioned in song or album credits; these are all categorized simply under percussion, with no specificities.

As well as that, it was part of the censorship and attack at jazz, a genre that most Nazis detested. Dub Reggae, as more instrumental form, is largely derived from reggae since the 1970s, so if a vocal song had that Flexatone already, it appears in the (remixed, instrumental) Dub version of it.In this stage, other percussion instruments, the said idiophones, were a kind of a side-path, though I practiced with it, and had quite some of these idiophones, using them and recording with them, alongside drums. One of these new generation percussionist is the already mentioned Hector Lewis of Chronixx’s Zinc Fence Redemption band, a “young lion” born in 1990.