Peru's cajon, the icon of its music, moves through the world with another identity. People think it is Flamenco, Spanish. It is made in Japan, in Germany -now under the brand of La Peru-, strings are added inside, and in Peru, Creoles and Afro-Peruvian descendants claim paternity. It is played passionately in Brazil. Madonna uses it as well as Jennifer Lopez and also rock and jazz bands. It is the star of world and ethnic music, the protagonist in commercials and now the National Symphony Orchestra gives it a position reserved earlier only for classical instruments. Isabel Alvarez and Victor Merino have composed a hymn in its honor. There is no doubt that this noble instrument of undeniable Peruvian origins is on its way to become universalized.

Declared the Nation's Cultural Heritage, its certificate of birth emerged from anonymity and, like the prodigal son, it was welcomed home. Maria del Carmen Dongo, a big league percussionist, assumed the challenge of repatriating the identity of our cajon, which Paco de Lucia took with him to Spain 25 years ago as a generous gift from the great maestro Caitro Soto, our composer Chabuca Granda's favorite cajon player. In Spain strings were added, tuning pegs, another board, to adapt it to the rhythm of Flamenco, but this Peruvian cajon, mestizo no matter how you look at it, prepared for the long journey home. With its identity now recovered, we gave it permission to continue conquering the world, with the sole proviso that it be called Peruvian.

ON THE HEELS OF THE PERUVIAN CAJON
Tracking the Peruvian cajon has not been easy, for it is undoubtedly almost two hundred years old. A student of its origin, the musician and maestro cajon player, Rafael Santa Cruz, author of the book El Cajon afro Peruano, gives 1821 and 1840 as the probable dates. This was the period when the zamacueca became fashionable in Lima, a cosmopolitan city at the time, and with it, its inseparable companion: the cajon. The dance traveled to Chile and became la chilena (afterwards the cueca and, in Argentina the zamba), but the cajon did not stay only in the south. Later the marinera appeared from the offspring of the zamacueca and the cajon remained at its side, Santa Cruz tells us. The cajon gradually disappeared from other spheres and from other types of music it was assuredly accompanying and stayed with the Limenian marinera and the northern marinera.

IT IS ONE THING WITH A GUITAR AND QUITE ANOTHER WITH CAJON
By almost the middle of the twentieth century -about 1940- however, ours was in danger of becoming lost. It was involved with the tondero, with the marinera, but in the 1940s it was waltz that was queen and this dance did not need cajon, for the guitar reigned in the ballroom. According to Santa Cruz, it was between the 1950s and 60s that the cajon began to insinuate itself with the waltz, reaching a point that they became inseparable. No party could be considered such without the beating of a good cajon, which finally emerged from behind stage, just like the mystical cajon player, Francisco "Maquina" Monserratte, in the 1950s, of whom it was said that a record company had insured his hands for one hundred thousand soles at the value of the day, a veritable fortune. He is considered the greatest cajon player of Peruvian music due to his lengthy repertoire of taps and beats and his masterful improvisations. It was then that the cajon began to shine, accompanying the waltz, the polkas, the panalivio, the lando, and the dynamic sensual Negro dances, like the festejo and the alcatraz. Today, it is inconceivable for Peruvian coastal music to be played without a cajon, but it was unarguably due to the waltz that the cajon became a part of the collective national instruments.

THE ORIGIN OF ITS NAME
Its name is indicative of its simple, almost marginal origin, and was taken -according to Santa Cruz, -from the boxes of goods that were offloaded at the ports. The Negroes recycled these boxes, converting them into an instrument known by the same name as the original article. Percussion, -Santa Cruz tells us- in wanting to get a sound out of everything, is closely associated with the Africans; it is in the very genes of this ethnic group.

CAJON AND MUSICIAN: THE PERFECT UNION
The cajon is made in Peru of cedar or fine mahogany, as we know it today, has undergone a series of changes. In 1959 Abelardo Vasquez and Nicomedes Santa Cruz standardized its measurements.

Up until then there were several different models, from that of maestro Monserratte, with a narrow, very thin wooden structure and a tiny hole, to the very short, wide, fat, leaning Creole cajon. It was very difficult with the old cajon to distinguish between treble and bass and even more so with sounds on the medium-range.

We know the cajon was not always played with the player astride the instrument. Cajon players would sit on a chair and tilt the cajon back, holding it between their legs, but not suspended in the air. There were also cajon players who beat not only on the front, but also on the sides.

What remains unknown is why the cajon player started to play seated over the instrument. In fact, many consider it to be the only musical instrument on which the player sits while performing. Maybe a chair was missing in a gathering -Rafael Santa Cruz ventures- and there was no choice but to use the cajon, or maybe someone discovered that it sounded different and better that way.

CAJON PLAYING STYLES: A MATTER OF FAMILY
"Each Negro family gave a different accent to its playing, with one more or one less tap; that the Vasquez family accompanied a waltz in one way, the Campos family in another, and the Santa Cruz family in still another, but the root is always the same; it does not change" says Maria del Carmen.

The fortune of some musical pieces and documents about the cajon appears to have changed, and they have found their proper place in the hands of the erudite Marco Aurelio Denegri, who has coined the term "cajonistologist" to refer to an expert on the cajon. According to Santa Cruz, Dr. Denegri has an unpublished work based on his own research on the Peruvian cajon. Musicologist Chalena Vasquez is about to publish a book summarizing the history of musical culture on our coastal and in our highlands. And as if this were not enough, two sound engineers have a theory about the acoustical possibilities of the cajon that corroborate the opinion of an acoustical physicist who maintains that the hole (11 centimeters) is the exact size needed for the quantity of sounds that are expected to emerge from a standard cajon, whose dimensions overall are ideal. If this did not happen by chance, the mystery is who decided to use these dimensions, who experimented?

This is information yet to be clarified. Mysteries to be unveiled, further dissemination of the cajon, protection of its production process. Its worldwide launching under our denomination of origin "because the world awaits the sound of a cajon made in Peru", Maria del Carmen announced and remarks that above all she is waiting for the cajon to find a place of its own in the hearts of the Peruvians.