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Hi, I'm Aaron Bland on behalf of Expert Village and I'm going to talk to you a little bit
today about the claves. Probably the oldest instrument known to man. It's basically two
sticks designed to be hit together. This is an Afro-Cuban instrument that comes out of
Brazil. It's an idiophone, there's your vocabulary word for the day. It's a percussion instrument
made out of the instrument itself vibrating. It's not a membranophone like a drum where
it has a membrane where the drumhead vibrates. It's actually the kind of wood; it's a hard
wood, a loud wood that gives you a chirping or clicking sound when they're struck together.
These are used in drum circles. They're used in Latin American music because of their cutting
sound. You could have a drum circle with a hundred drummers playing and, if you've got
a set of these, everybody in that drum circle is going to be able to hear the pulse or the
rhythm that's being played on the claves. Another word for that pulse or that rhythm
or that feel is the word clave, which refers to the feel of the music. The translation
of clave translates into clef or key, like the key signature of a song, telling you is
it going to played in the key of G. Well, in Latin music, especially the percussive
end of it, the key was the feel of the song, the rhythmic feel or how you danced to it.
Just an interesting piece of knowledge you can digest for a little bit. Stay tuned.