He can rattle them off in sequence, like body percussion: left arm, right arm, broken jaw, broken nose, mountain bike, BMX, skateboard, street luge, snapped finger, split brow, sprained joint, severed pinky.

NEWYORKER: The Martian Chroniclers

"It's in the rhythm, the orchestration, and in the choice of instruments like using the tres guitar or percussion instruments like a zabumba or a pandeiro here and there, " he says.

NPR: Robert Gomez: 'On This Day'

But in late summer, for the five days of the Petronio Alvarez Pacific Music Festival, salsa takes a back seat to the diverse sounds of Colombian Pacific music like cumbia and currulao, and its cacophony of percussion instruments, like the marimba.

BBC: A little liquid courage in Cali, Colombia

Regular drum sets were complemented or replaced by bits of percussion that sounded like garbage cans being knocked together.

NEWYORKER: Gravel Pit

As the two soloists wove their rhythms around each other, it sounded like a conversation, and one wondered if percussion might be a universal language after all.

ECONOMIST: Percussion instruments

In the ensuing years Septen adapted to music styles springing up in Haiti, like Compa Direct, a slower form of Dominican merengue, and added emphasis to instruments like guitars and keyboards on top of the saxophones, trumpets and percussion sections.

WSJ: The Enduring Voice of Haiti