The Death of the Tamborero

Mecho died. Two nights ago the old man left us. Life killed him: the sun, the air, the sea, love. There is something in death (perhaps the overwhelming feeling of a milestone reached) that moves us to reflect on those who leave. What a sweet death, his! To die after having lived intensely. In a simple house, he lived simply. He had some job somewhere, but his vocation was to live. He prepared pig bladders for the diablicos sucios1 of Corpus Christi in La Villa, trained fighting cocks, and made drums.

His hands, tanned, tanned the deer’s hide, leaving it to dry in the sun, shaving off its stubborn hair. They dug with the machete into the stiff trunk, until they found in the soul of the tree the cylindrical body of the drum. Then, with rope and wedges, he stretched the membrane over the hollow mouth to the exact point of tuning. The wood varnished, the belt bristling, the finished drum looked like a cannon of peace, the symbol of a Punto2 made eternal in the seed, the gesture of the peasant from Los Santos, ready for work and for the fiesta. Each one of his drums was a cipher of its author; it was Mecho made of wood and hide.

Tamborero is what we call the one who plays, the one who cheers the crowd with his nortes3 and corridos4, at the head of a tuna5, in the small hours6 of Carnival. But the one who makes the instrument years before is also a tamborero, the one who conceives, designs, produces, and puts each drum to the test as he would a son. The artisan is the first artist. Mecho liked music to the point of saying that whoever does not like it is dead. Now that he is, he will go on living in the rumble of the drumhead, in the puje7 and the repique8, in the feverish vibration of the deerskin over the tree trunk.

Three arts, as old as man himself, still seem magical to us: healing, teaching, and making music. The drum is possibly the oldest musical instrument. It is said that all the great works of music contain a rhythm that emulates the beating of the human heart, and that for this reason they appeal to our instinct and make us feel alive. The drum is the simplest vehicle of rhythm. One is enough, alongside a bottle of seco9, to make a party under the summer moon. In what culture, in what civilization, has there not been some drum characteristic of that people? Behind each one is the tamborero who created it. His hands, like those of the healer and the teacher, hold a primitive mystery, a primordial magic, and call us to awaken, to see the world, to live.

Mecho, old friend, you have died, and I do not believe it. They held your wake with lemongrass10, bread, and cheese. They wept for you, they buried you. Now, while your body rots, they pray the endless rosary to God, that He may forgive your sins. What sins, compadre11, if you were a saint? Your hands sanctified you, for every drum you built to make yourself eternal. You were all men, and at the same time you were unique. Now that you are gone, who will replace you?