Istvan Dely  

drummer and percussionist, Colombia / Hungary

One of the early forerunners of European musicians passionately dedicated to African drumming. Trained in Cuba and West Africa, became a rock and jazz star in his native Hungary in the seventies, emigrated to Colombia, where he married Leonor with whom he started a fantastic musical family venture, Millero Congo (his Bantu name received upon initiation into the Congo cult in Cuba assigning to him the lifelong mission of being a "Congo seedbed"), which became the most versatile, virtuoso and at the same time, spiritually committed Afro Colombian and Caribbean percussion group and drumming school.

Author of a comprehensive textbook on African Caribbean hand drumming, Tabalá - Drums for everyone, now he spends most of his time travel teaching in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, on Bahá'í projects of Cultural Ecology to promote the use of traditional community arts for teaching and consolidating the Bahá'í Faith. He has done all the percussion arrangements on Leonor's two albums, Ámame and Talisman.



Travel teaching trip in Brazil, January 2003.

Contact Istvan at: istvandely@interlap.com.ar


Amame - Palabras Ocultas de Bahá'u'lláh, 2000   list of tracks
(Love Me - The Hidden Words of Bahá'u'lláh)