Happy Peanuts is a well known band from the island of

Curaçao Curaçao, officially the Country of Curaçao, is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in the southern Caribbean Sea (specifically the Dutch Caribbean region), about north of Venezuela. Curaçao includ ...

. Their styles include local '' tumba'' and ''

combined rhythm Ritmo Kombina (Combined rhythm) is a style of popular music of Aruba and the Dutch Antilles, Dutch Antillean music, influenced by Zouk (musical movement), zouk and soca music. The lyrics of combined rhythm are generally in the local Papiamento lang ...

'', as well as Dominican merengue. One of the driving forces of modern tumba and

, Happy Peanuts blends driving

congas The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are stave (wood), staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (drum), quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), an ...

and

timbales Timbales () or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size.Orovio, Helio 1981. ''Diccionario de la música cubana: biográfic ...

with

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

and

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...

. Also unique to Happy Peanuts is their style of merengue. Because there is no

güira The güira () is a percussion instrument from the Dominican Republic used in merengue, bachata, and to a lesser extent, other genres such as cumbia. It is made of a metal sheet (commonly steel) and played with a stiff brush, thus being similar ...

player, the pattern is instead played on the hi-hat by the

drumset A drum kit or drum set (also known as a trap set, or simply drums in popular music and jazz contexts) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and sometimes other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one p ...

player. Their most well known song continues to be "Kareda di Buriku" (Donkey Race), which is synonymous to the culture of Curaçao, and is a very popular dance song.

References

Hispanic Magazine
* Music of the Lesser Antilles Music organisations based in Curaçao {{Curaçao-stub