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Cowbell
maker molds metal for salsa scene April 9, 2001
Caly Rivera pounded on a piece of sheet metal in his cluttered workshop. Drums hung from the ceilings, goat skins soaked in tubs of water and photographs covered the walls. This faded blue and pink storefront on 162nd Street and Ogden Avenue in Highbridge is JCR Percussion, where Rivera makes a living making cowbells and drums. "It's hard for just anybody who wants to be a bell maker because you don't know the sound," said Rivera, 63."I can hear each sound. It's just something that you get." Local musicians such as Eddie Torres, who played percussion with Tito Puente, said Rivera is the only cowbell maker left in the borough. Rivera has always loved music. "When I was a kid, I was always playing with a fork on my plate," he said. "My mom kept saying, 'You're gonna break my plates!' I broke a lot of plates." Rivera taught himself how to shape instruments when he lived in Puerto Rico and helped his father repair guitars. "I would pick up scraps from his work and make drums out of it," he said. Rivera moved to Highbridge from Puerto Rico when he was 19 and worked several jobs while playing music. Timbales, the drums that set the salsa beat, were his life. "It's hard to find good instruments," Rivera said. "So I decided to try it myself." Rivera opened JCR Percussion in 1972. Now, musicians come from as far away as Japan and Africa to buy his bongos and congas, or cowbells - his best seller. He also made congas for the 1992 movie "The Mambo Kings." Rivera runs the business with his wife, Lily, 52. She said she didn't know anything about music before meeting Rivera. "Now I'm making timbales and bells," she said. Rivera said he makes instruments for about 100 music chain stores, such as Guitar Center, his largest client, and Sam Ash. He sells his bells from the shop for $24 and his drums for $250 to $300. Customers prefer the handmade instruments, said Gabriel Gutierrez, who works at Guitar Center in Queens. "You can get different shapes and tones," he said Luis Infantes, a bassist, agreed. He said making cowbells by hand is a lost art. "JCR masters the art of fine-tuning metal instruments," he said. "Whenever you hit the metal, it's very melodious." "A big company uses large machines to make cowbells," Rivera said, "and they bang them out a lot at a time. They're all going to be bad if the first bell is bad. I bend everything by hand. I make each one. If it's a beautiful sound, then I make more." The thinner the metal, the lower the pitch, he said. Rivera bends the metal to get the sounds he wants, but he can't explain it. "I know it in my head," he said. "There's some secret. Musicians know the difference when they play." |
