Cajon Drums, Cajons, Cajones, Flamenco Rhythm Boxes and Percussion Beat Box for all kinds of music, Patric Oliver Percussion!

The man behind POPercussion Cajon Drums is Patric Oliver Hetzinger, musician/percussionist, songwriter and drum builder. Patric has an eclectic background in rock, funk, jazz and flamenco, and he worked and toured with numerous flamenco dance ensembles in Europe, the United States, and Japan.

From his native Germany Patric moved to Los Angeles in 1990, studied at the Grove School of Music and worked as a freelance percussionist and singer/songwriter. He is a veteran of the Southern California flamenco scene, worked with various jazz string formations, and remains part of the spoken word/rock group AndThenSome. His cajon playing was featured in the 2001 Jennifer Lopez music video “Ain’t It Funny”.

In the past years Patric’s cajon playing has shifted more and more outside of traditional music. He currently likes to experiment with a cajon/drumset combination that includes an effects board for rock’n’roll, R&B and funk, with the dynamics of his cajon brush/hand technique for jazz and gipsy swing, and in various music and recording endeavours.

The man behind POPercussion Cajon Drums is Patric Oliver Hetzinger, musician/percussionist, songwriter and drum builder. Patric has an eclectic background in rock, funk, jazz and flamenco, and he worked and toured with numerous flamenco dance ensembles in Europe, the United States, and Japan. From his native Germany Patric moved to Los Angeles in 1990, studied at the Grove School of Music and worked as a freelance percussionist and singer/songwriter. He is a veteran of the Southern California flamenco scene, worked with various jazz string formations, and remains part of the spoken word/rock group AndThenSome. His cajon playing was featured in the 2001 Jennifer Lopez music video “Ain’t It Funny”. In the past years Patric’s cajon playing has shifted more and more outside of traditional music. He currently likes to experiment with a cajon/drumset combination that includes an effects board for rock’n’roll, R&B and funk, with the dynamics of his cajon brush/hand technique for jazz and gipsy swing, and in various music and recording endeavours. Patric moved back to Germany in 2007 and is now living in the Black Forest.

POPercussion
Patric first built a number of cajon drums for his own use in the late 1980ies when he started playing flamenco and found he couldn’t buy the instrument anywhere. 10 professional musician years later he brought his old hobby back to life and started POPercussion in Los Angeles in 1999. His unique and independent drum design quickly conquered its distinctive niche at the higher end of the cajon market, and POPercussion developed an ecstatic fan community among musicians inside and outside of flamenco.
In the spring of 2008 Patric moved the homebase of his company from Los Angeles to Germany. Since then he has been more than busy introducing POPercussion cajon drums to the German and European music market.
The POPercussion philosophy is simple: Sound is paramount, everything serves the sound. Only the best materials for the task, painstaking construction, expert tuning, and the commitment to simply building the best cajons imaginable.

Cajon - the Instrument
Cajon is the Spanish word for box. The instrument originated in colonial Peru, when slaves, whose African drums had been forbidden by their masters, resorted to boxes, crates and overturned drawers to play their rhythms.
With the years a real instrument developed, and in the early 1970's the cajon found its way into Flamenco music. Ideal for Flamenco - short staccato sounds that seem naturally related to the “taconeo” (footwork) and "palmas" (clapping) - its use has since spread worldwide.