Guest Lecture: Prof. Luis Jure (Montevideo, Uruguay)

Musical Traits and Performance Practice of Uruguayan Candombe Drumming: A Computational Musicological Approach

19.10.2022, 5:30 pm, at mdw AW U 0213 (Seminarraum IVE)

Candombe drumming is one of the most characteristic elements of Uruguayan culture. Deeply rooted in the Afro-Atlantic tradition, it has been widely adopted by society at large. However, it remains a symbol of the identity of the communities of African descent in Montevideo. Not very well-known abroad, Uruguayan Candombe possesses considerable rhythmic wealth and deserves wider recognition. In acknowledgment of its rich history and cultural value, in 2009, it was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

This talk aims to describe the most characteristic performance practices of Candombe drumming and analyze its most relevant musical traits, with particular attention to the rhythmic patterns of the three drums used in Candombe and their interplay. The talk will also present some lines of research developed in recent years that apply techniques of Music Information Retrieval and computational musicology to the analysis of different aspects of Candombe drumming.

Luis Jure (1960) is an Uruguayan composer and researcher living in Montevideo. He studied with noted Uruguayan composer Héctor Tosar and earned a degree in Composition at the School of Music of the University in Uruguay – UDELAR. He has been documenting and analyzing candombe drumming since the early 1990s, doing field and studio recordings and transcriptions. In recent years he has been collaborating with Dr. Ing. Martín Rocamora in using computational tools for musical analysis. Jure has presented articles at conferences like AAWM, CIM, ICTM, ISMIR, RPPW, and SMT and has lectured at academic institutions in America and Europe. He currently is a Full Professor at the Institute of Music of the Faculty of Arts, La Universidad de la República (UDELAR) in Uruguay, where he heads the Electronic Music Studio –eMe, of which he was a co-founder.