fbpx
Drummers, Feature Stories, Update

Omar Gongora


drummer Omar GongoraThe key to watching Kinky’s drummer/percussionist Omar Gongora live is to never blink. The fiery drummer, who fuels the band’s blend of Latin rock, electronica, and disco, never stops moving as he swings from a DW drumkit that he plays standing up to congas, timbales, a Roland 808, and a TD-10. “Yeah, I have a lot of work to do,” he says with a laugh. “That’s why I’m so skinny. I get a lot of exercise.”

Gongora has been playing standing up for about five years now, mainly because it’s the only way he can get around his expansive setup. “In the beginning I played drums and percussion,” he explains. “But I couldn’t easily switch to the congas because I was sitting at a normal set of drums. Then I came up with the idea of standing up to play everything, and now I feel very comfortable.”

Gongora and his Kinky compatriots recorded their second offering, Atlas (Nettwerk), in a jungle about two hours outside of Cancun, Mexico. The setting lent Omar’s percussion playing a different feel. “It was an amazing place to record,” he says. “I really felt more ‘animal’ when playing the congas, timbales, and djembe there. I started to make a whole percussion section by sequencing drumkit parts and then adding other parts with cowbells, congas, and djembe. It was really interesting. I did have to back off on some of the parts, though, because they were filling up too much space in the music.”

 


Posted in Drummers, Feature Stories, Update Tagged Omar Gongora


Shopping cart
There are no products in the cart!
Continue shopping
0