An eloquent and surprisingly articulated investigation into new ways of making music with an instrument not generally associated with cutting edge experimentation and contemporary composition. A THOUSAND RAWHIDE DIAPHRAGMS is the latest work by percussion adventurer Maurizio Ravalico, who, after consolidating his lifelong love affair with found objects and creative multi-percussion music with his 2018 solo album Nobody’s Husband, Nobody’s Dad, is now turning his attention back to his first instrument, the conga drum. With a twist, that is. Maurizio is not new to daring forays into uncharted musical territories. During the course of a surprisingly varied career spanning from the late eighties to today, Maurizio has constantly shown a restlessness and a desire to cross-pollinate and draw connections between artistic fields not often associated or related. His signature creative output is marked by frequent departures from safe and established comfort zones, and interspersed with collaborations in fields as diverse as salsa, free-form improvisation, funk, electro-acoustic experimentation, afrobeat, composed music, jazz and contemporary dance. Congas are an unusual instrument to feature on their own, save for the occasional flashy solo within a larger ensemble set. And even on percussion-based styles traditionally centred on congas they are almost invariably aided by woods, metals and shakers of one sort or another. Forcibly deprived of these anchoring aids, and liberated from their customary time-keeping obligations, congas reveal in Maurizio’s hands an unexpected range of sonic possibilities and open up to fresh structural avenues, marking A THOUSAND RAWHIDE DIAPHRAGMS as the first ever full scale work to be composed, orchestrated and performed exclusively on congas. Each track on A THOUSAND RAWHIDE DIAPHRAGMS tells a different tale, and although Maurizio is the only player on the album, the orchestration is extremely varied. Some tracks are solo pieces, like the three "Interludes": short improvisations restricted to very specific and usually marginal areas of congas’ sound palette. Some are duos, notably the album’s opening track A Cheaper Love Letter; others are pieces for larger congas ensembles, like the epic title track, a choral piece resembling a birds’ murmuration, which requires a conductor for its live performance. But what all the tracks have in common is a keen avoidance of any of the roles that are generally associated to, and expected from, this particular instrument, and a desire to enlarge both its lexicon and its stylistic applications. There’s nothing 'latin', or 'African' in A THOUSAND RAWHIDE DIAPHRAGMS, and despite being firmly rooted in both legacies, each track points towards some new, previously unexplored paths. While working on the album, Maurizio says, “my intention was that of creating 'music for congas' in the widest and less restrictive sense. My only self-imposed limitations were that no instrument other than congas can be used, and that nothing else than bare hands should be employed to play them. No 'preparations' with supplementary material were allowed either, nor electronic sound manipulations. Within these given restrictions, any way of creating music was allowed.” From the long manifesto on the album liner notes we also read:“The last thirty years have seen a formidable evolution in congas technique, thanks to the seminal examples of Changuito, Giovanni Hidalgo and the legacy that followed in their steps.Yet not much has been added in terms of content during the same period. It is my opinion that congas have a lot of potential still in want of being explored, both in the realm of composition and improvisation, but also in their basic lexicon. I like to think of this album as a collection of seeds, bound to grow in many different and unexpected directions. The best reward for me would be to know that this small effort of mine has been a source of inspiration for other conga players, instigating them to venture into new areas that I haven’t even imagined myself.”. “What we have here is a musical instrument that originated in the American continent, and it is the Americas that have always been the reference and the prime mover of both the tradition and any innovation at all stages of its history. The UK and the rest of Europe (which are certainly not short of excellent players) have until now mainly been cultural importers and replicators of the art of congas playing. What I’m aiming at with this project, in all its differentiable outputs, is to shift this balance, by bringing the late XX Century European experience into the equation, and turn what is now a unidirectional cultural flow into a two-way conversation. ”Maurizio’s quest for redefining the conga drum is also manifest in a parallel, more academically oriented project, The New Conga Lab, an online collection of new studies for conga drums, which is gathering around itself a growing community of keen conga players, students and composers.