Bata de China....

Before I forget, I saw a posting on echuaye.blogspot that reminded me of some pics that were sent to me by Antoine Miniconi.

(cha cha, shells in the rear right)

(enu)

(la familia)

(itotele, iya, okonkolo)

These are obviously not really from China, but made by members of the famous "Los Chinitos de Corea" (innovators of the guarapachangeo) rhythm that's all but the standard nowadays. Barry's site has a great post about a little of the history of this family of rumberos.

http://esquinarumbera.blogspot.com/2007/02/from-tukutum-kutum-to-kinpakin-pakin.html

Here is what Antoine wrote:

Estos modelos estan en 550€, hay modelos a 650€ (Iya mas grande, 32.5cm de boca!) y modelos a 800€ (son tambores de Cedro, mayor de 32.5 tambien, en cedro es la madera que se usa para los tambores de fundamento, suena muy fuerte y tiene un tono de nota especial, o sea el tambor perfecto!) Los hacemos con Los Chinitos!
La madera esta tratada contra los comejenes (Xylophène traido de Francia), los herrajes son de acero inoxidable (no se oxydan, alta resistencia, trabajamos con el mejos harrero de la Habana), y las tinas (cascos) estan barnizados con baznir que traigo de Francia tambien.
O sea claramente son de lejos los mejores tambores de la Habana!
Montamos tambien los tambores con cañamo, suenan mejor todavia pero tienes que animarte a estirar los...
Bueno, saludos!

Basically he is telling me that the models in the picture are 550 euro or 820 bucks. The bigger size set with a bigger iya made of Cedro or Cedar is 800 euro or almost $1200 bucks. Stainless steel harware. Finished with some kind of varnish brought over from France and so forth. Click on his name in the beginning of the post to check out his blog, and contact him directly if interested. He also shells chekeres made by Los Chinitos as well. Its a pretty cool blog. I did ask him what the prices were for traditionally strung bata, and he told me the same, so there it is...