Thirty three years after Peru proclaimed its independence on the 28th of July in 1821, the enslaved Africans who had been brought to peru since the first half of the 16th century, were finally liberated with the abolition of slavery under president Ramon Castilla's Government.
The oldest known literary reference to the Afro-Peruvian Cajon is around 1850 (Manuel Atanasio Fuentes), so it's assumed that the Afro-Peruvian Cajon is at least 160 years old. The Cajon has also been represented in 19th century paintings showing traditional feasts and dances.
The possibility that the Afro-Peruvian Cajon appeared before 1850 is consistent with another important fact, which is the prohibition of the use of drums issued by the Catholic Church in the 18th century. The prohibition was not only aimed at the drums used by the enslaved Africans, but also particularly at a musical genre and rhythm known as Panalivio. The lyrics in the Panalivio explicitly expose and denounce the abuses to which enslaved Africans were submitted to.
The last known reference to the use of drums drums dates from 1813, and the hypothesis that the Afro-Peruvian Cajon made entirely of wood replaced other drums, is consistent with this fact, as well as with the timeframe that it appears in. The Cajon is thus born as an instrument of cultural resistance.
Today there are important initiatives to reconstruct the history of the cultural practices and traits that the African population in Peru developed over more than 400 years. Music and dance are two important parts of cultural memory, since they also contribute important narrative content and testimony that allow recovering fragments of a largely unwritten history.
Recovering the history of an instrument that has had such a wide impact on music outside of Peru -to the point that its origin has been attributed to the Flamenco genre- is just as necessary as the recovery of other Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments, such as the "Cajita", the "Quijada", the "Checo" and the "Angara".
Today, and aside of the important contribution made by the Afro-Peruvian Museum in Zaña, one important initiative moving in this direction is the International Cajon Festival, which is celebrating its third version this year 2010 (Read more). Part of it's motivation is to acknowledge the influence and incorporation of Afro-Peruvian rhythmic elements and instruments to the diverse music genres and dances present throughout the coastal region of Peru.

The Cajones of Atempo are the perfect balance between innovative aesthetic elaboration and respect for the experience gathered in the traditional construction of the Afro-Peruvian Cajon. The true guarantee for their characteristically deep bass and clearly defined crashtones, lies in the construction principles that experience has harvested over the years.
The essential rules followed in the construction or assembly of the instruments are very important, and since the Cajon is an instrument with more then 150 years of history, there are certain principles that have been gained in the experience, and that are carefully followed in the construction of the Cajon. These essential principles are the ones that guarantee the quality of its characteristic sound.

The first and perhaps most important principle, is to make a resonance cage or main body in massive wood. The density and specific character of the wood guarantees a deep bass and an open -and not "muffled"- type of sound. The density and special characteristics of each wood will give the instrument its distinctive timbre.
With plywood -and no matter how beautiful, noble or expensive it might look- the resonance cage will sound muffled and it won't really render the full breath and depth of its distinctive bass. Plywood does not have the same density and solid body of massive wood, which allows the Cajon to do what it precisely does so well: resonate. We sincerely believe that to build a Cajon from plywood ist to underestimate its musical value, as well as to kill its full potential as the musical instrument that it is.

The crisp slapsounds are also critical, and especially considering the Snare Cajones. If misplaced, the traditionally used guitar strings, or todays most commonly used snare threads, will contaminate the bass, which will sound equally "snary" and without the clean reverberance that gives it its full and open depth.
The snare variation of the traditional Peruvian Cajon is originated as the Cajon travels to Spain in the hands of Flamenco guitarrist Paco de Lucia, who received a Cajon as a gift from one of Peru's groundbreaking Cajon players, Carlos "Caitro" Soto, after a performance in Lima in 1974. The since then traditional role of the Cajon in Flamenco music has more to do with the extremely crisp snaresounds of the instruments upper corners, than with the use of a deep and reverberant bass, which is a general characteristic of African percussion and music. We shouldn't forget that the Cajon is an instrument that is born in the African slave communities in the early 19th century. Some of todays Flamenco instrumentalists actually aid themselves with a Djembe when wanting to rely on a deeper and more reverberant bass.

Another feature that guarantees a good bass, reverberance and tonality, are the feet upon which the Cajon rests, and that isolate it from the floor. The feet have to assure sufficient isolation of the resonance cage from the floor, or the floor will absorb the sound as well as muffle it and make it sound choked.

The aesthetical or decorative aspect of a Cajon is of course important, but if these features go against the principles that allow a Cajon to give its full potential, it will not matter how beautiful the instrument looks, the sound will simply be a poor company to it's appearance. Take an Udu for example, an African percussion instrument made of clay. If decorated with varnish or painted, the special resonance and character that the clay and its minerals bestow, will be muffled by the layer of the decorative element that covers its surface and impregnates its body. Replacing clay with glassfiber or some other solid material to manufacture this instrument, will yield the same results. The tonal characteristics of clay are unique, and will be completely lost in such an experiment. Each instrument is unique as such, and so are it's acoustic characteristics. These are set by the material that it is made in, as well as from the mastery of the hands that play it. But no adornment, decoration or aesthetic feature will better its sound. Perhaps the very name "instrument" says it all. It is something made to serve another purpose, something functional. And the purpose of this instrument is to create beauty more than to embody it.

The difference between our Cajones is not given by price or appearence, but by the peculiar characteristics of the woods used, which give them their unique timbre and tonality.
The prices of our Cajones do not determine sound quality, they represent the value of the woods used in the construction of our different Cajones, as well as the complexity involved in their construction. In this sense sound quality is, strictly speaking, the difference in tonality, which is ultimately determined by the wood(s) used.