Women conga drummers, or congueras, are making their mark in the traditionally male-dominated field of percussion. That includes Milwaukee musician Bony Benavides. She immigrated from Colombia more than two decades ago and has been tearing it up in rhythm sections and classrooms around the city.
Sometimes she’s the only woman musician in a sea of men. Sometimes she’s at smaller gigs with one or two other musicians. Other days, she’s teaching. But even when she’s not doing any of those things, she’s probably drumming.
“I’m containing my hands quite a bit,” she says, while drumming in the WUWM studio. “I tell this to my students too, because [in class] they have a drum in front of them, and it's impossible to talk. And I'm like, ‘Listen, I know, because I go through this.’ I'm in meetings. I do it [drum] all the time. I'm at a restaurant, anywhere — it's always there.”
At Bémbe Drum & Dance one crisp October night, about a half dozen adult students are warming up on djembes and tambor alegres. One drum is from the Atlantic coast of Colombia and the other is from West Africa. They’re very versatile.
“Since we started working on the fandango alegra let’s start with that, let’s warm our hands,” Benavides tells the class. “Then let’s get to the llamador part. Hopefully that’s going to get us a lot more centered on where the beat is.”
These rhythms are like second nature to Benavides. She first encountered percussion as a student at an all-girls school in Bogota, Colombia, when she was 13.
“And just part of my music class, I started playing percussion," she says. "It was a very different program than what I see here in the States, very hands on, experimental. It was not a lot of ‘you have to read music,’ but it was just, ‘let's make music.’”
She found her way into extra percussion lessons on Saturdays. “There was a Cuban son group, there was a salsa group. What else did I do? Musica Andena from the Andes, un grupo de Gaita, which is Colombian from the northern coast. So just once the bug got in me, then it was like just plain, you know, in every any performance that would come for us. So very fortunate, made great friends. I mean, for life. You know, music does that.”
Percussion tends to be a pretty male-dominated space. Benavides says she experienced that in Colombia as well.
“The beautiful thing was that I never saw it when I was learning or getting into the music, because we were all girls, even though my teachers were both men," she says. "It was always outside when I started to realize that, oh, wow, people are giving me the weird looks."
Some of those “weird looks” happened at a Festival for Gaita music with her teacher, Gustavo. Gaita is a distinctive folk music tradition from the more rural northern coast of Colombia. Benavides says it wasn’t very popular in the city at the time.
“So when he took us, we were, you know, very young, 16, 17, from the capitol, right? And there used to be a lot of, I don't know, the dynamics between the regions were very strong. So there was...these stereotypes, 'Oh, they're from the capitol, so they have money and they're privileged and ah, and why are they coming to our town to learn our music and our tradition?' And so I was playing the lead drum, the tambor alegre, that's the drum that improvises, and my friend Monica was playing the main flute.”
Benavides says in that festival, women would sing, dance or maybe play a small drum. But they wouldn’t play the lead instruments.
“We actually placed third in the competition, the only female group and the only group from outside of the region. Right?" she remembers. "And after that, people were like, ‘Oh, okay. They they're okay.’ They realized that we're just doing it with all the respect for the tradition...We just wanted to hear them play and learn from them. That's all we wanted. There was nothing else. So they saw that, and then we went back the following year, and they were very welcoming.”
About 25 years ago, Benavides packed up her life and immigrated to the United States. Her sister was doing her master's at Carthage College, and invited her to come check it out. Benavides liked it and stayed in Kenosha — bringing her drums with her.
“I didn't speak English, so it took me — it was kind of hard realizing that I wasn't catching up to the language as quickly as I thought," Benavides says. "So it took me about a year, and then then I went to college at UW-Parkside, but in the percussion program, it was mostly classical percussion.”
She says there, she was blessed to have jazz percussionist Dave Bayles as an instructor.
“Because even though he didn't really play hand drums, he was very supportive. He was very excited to have me in the program, like, ‘We'll make it work,’" she says. "So at first again, my music reading was not very — like I could read rhythms, but I couldn't play marimba and do any of those things...So he made it work for me, and I had a lot of catching up to do.”
Benavides finished college and went on to a master's in ethnomusicology from Arizona State, studying the folkloric tradition of gaita from Colombia.
Then, she came back to Milwaukee.
“I love the city, and I like all the things that are happening in the city. You know, for music, it is a struggle. Music, it's a tricky business, but there's still places and festivals and supportive places and people doing great things that we can offer music to the community,” she says.
One of those places is Samba Da Vida MKE, an all-ages Brazilian Samba troupe, where Benavides is a co-director with percussionist Julio Pabón. She’s also in Latin jazz fusion band De La Buena, and has a recurring gig with singer Darele Bisquerra at Transfer Pizzaria Café. Sometimes she plays with vibraphonist Mitchell Shiner and bass player Joey Sanchez.
While Benavides sparkles on the congas or other percussion during a solo, she has a quiet power and humility.
“I think it comes from, from my mom and my family,” Benavides says when asked where her humility comes from. "If I'm on stage, I want to do a good job. It's not about me. I'm part of a group. I mean, if I'm doing a solo thing, sure, but it's never, I'm never up there by myself...It's about what I can bring with the people that I'm sharing the space with.”
Benavides has said that “If you're into it, you can make it happen. There are no limits, not age, not gender.”
“I see it all the time with students, young and older students that come to Bémbe that are just, you know, all of a sudden, they're looking for something, and they find drumming, and they realize, you know, the same realization that I had when I was that little girl in high school that got up and played a pattern when the teachers ask if somebody wanted to come," Benavides says. "They're like, ‘Oh, I think I can do this.’ And then the little spark gets there and then people just flourish — young and adults — I see it the whole spectrum.”
Benavides is creating sparks, one drum strike at a time.
