changui

Keyla Orozco’s “Para Tí Nengón” (1998), a transfixing percussion work, elaborates on rhythmic patterns typical in nengón, a form native to eastern Cuba, from which the later popular styles son and changui evolved. Ms. Orozco’s four-movement fantasy begins with comparatively simple, light-textured patterns, played on wood blocks, but its rhythms grow increasingly complex as the players — Matthew Gold and Eduardo Leandro — move to bongos and tom-toms, then to bell-like instruments and percussive vocalizations.

2007 January 10, Allan Kozinn, “Earthy Cuban Sounds, Rendered With an Urban Complexity”, in New York Times