Harold playing la güira to Antony Santos “La Bahía” at LA bachata fest 2010 as part of Carlos Cinta’s very popular bachata musicality workshop. In this video we introduce you the Güira. You can train you ear to hear this instrument in every bachata song. This will help you to improvise and change the timing of your bachata steps so you are not dancing like a bachata-bot to the same beat.

A güira (pronounced goey-ra) is a percussion instrument from the Dominican Republic, generally used in bachata, as background instrument, that sounds like a maraca or hi-hat but in fact is a sheet of metal—in practice, often from a five gallon oil can—evenly perforated with a nail, shaped into a cylinder or torpedo-like shape, and played with a stiff brush. In bachata, the güira is brushed steadily on the downbeat with a “and-a” thrown in at certain points, or played in more complex syncopated patterns that generally mark the time.



More güira:

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