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Give Cal Tjader a listen. Sounds like it might be in line with what they're doing.
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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11-03-2023 01:29 PM
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I think people also stick an iron curtain between swing rhythms and ‘Latin’ rhythms for some reason. An appreciation of clave, cascara and Bembe etc is incredibly helpful for swing.
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Perfect example, Guachi Guara you could double the piano you could play any bell pattern (in the right direction) particularly the 6/8 pattern (leaving out a few strokes) generally played 3-2 so make sure direction is lined up but you will hear it sit nice with the piano. Knowing the mambo bell pattern is essential for all rhythm players in these styles...now your loaded for bear! Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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This reminds me of a lesson I had with Steve Erquiaga, a great player and teacher. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
He asked me my goal. I said something to the effect that I wanted to be able to play a hipper version of Georgia On My Mind, as an example of what I was trying to do.
His reply was something to the effect that he didn't learn to play a hipper version of Georgia by practicing Georgia.
After two decades of studying Brazilian music I can now play a hipper version of Georgia than I could back then.
Similarly, studying the rhythms of Cuba, Brazil or other places increases one's capacity for hearing and executing any rhythm.
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When your Brazilian becomes informed with your new found Cuban your gonna be dangerous! Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Your Georgias gonna become Jorge-ia
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yeah peter Bernstein said that the best way to phrase in waltz time was to sing the bembe bell pattern and then improvise as if it was in 4/4 against 6/8 Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
easier to demonstrate than explain. I should probably practice that.
Anyway,it’s fun to practice your bird heads while singing the clave. Or sing them while tapping the clave at the same time. Most of them are in 2-3 (not all though). You can tell when they are crossed - when you have the 2 3 against the 3 2 - just like in Cuban music.
drummers know this stuff…
it’s all good. The stuff Bonsritmos posted about Ketu rhythms ages ago was amazing. It’s changed the way I play pre war jazz for sure…. People should focus on this stuff more.
but the take away from Cuban music and related African diaspora music inc jazz is that being concerned with the beats/upbeats is far too European. Syncopation too is European concept - the rhythmic accentuation in jazz involves what we think of syncopation, but that’s structural, baked in and ‘neutral’ - typically some sort of phrase with a front end and back end. clave gives you one version of that, which is why crossed claves are dissonant. You have to internalise that stuff.
Brahms syncopated for effect, Bird plays around the west African diaspora rhythmic accents.Last edited by Christian Miller; 11-03-2023 at 04:00 PM.
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might as well wear this out... on the other hand if your playing Brazilian jazz I often play a modified songo (im also a percussionist) so it works both ways
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One of my favorite Brazilian musicians was also a Cuban musician. Joao Donato. He worked in both genres. Originally Posted by Rickco
Edu Ribeiro, a major figure in Brazilian drumming, teaches flexibility in using a rhythm from one style while playing another. He's Brazilian and he has a Grammy for backing up Paquito D'Rivera.
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For a couple of years I was priviledged to play in a Charanga band (flt, violin x 2, percussion, bass and gtr/tres, vocals x many) playing acoustic afrocuban stuff.
When on guitar I mimiced a tres, playing montunos and a couple of occasional melodies - so I put a new bridge on the guitar and converted it to a tres - still playing montunos and a couple of occasional melodies. I almost never played rhythm guitar, though electric bands do it a bit mostly I think because husbands of the musicians are guitarists....
My biggest regret was using scales when I soloed (had to solo) like a jazz player - soloing in that sort of band with essentially a rhythmic instrument needs complete mastery of simple triadic shapes, linking them together and forming essentially diatonic melodies highly figured with rhythm. I always felt the bottom fell out of the groove when I entered 'the mixolydian mode', playing my acoustic guitar. Simple triads would have done it far better. Even the violins when soloing tended to use long notes, pyrotechnics and rhythmic figures in their solos.
THE biggest problem though is when the bass player does not play the 'tumbao' - (ba ka ta), doowwn doowwnn, (ba ka ta), doowwn doowwn as I have internalised it - no-one could link together and the dancers were non-plussed. There was no encore that night though there nearly always was.
It's also worth learning what the calls from the leader might mean- we were grooving our way through something and the (very well known Cuban/UK violinist) leader called 'Dos!' holding up two fingers. None, or too few of us knew what he meant so nothing happened apart from a man shouting 'dos!' at the band.
However I will always remember the MD of a gig dealing with the audience at the end of a good gig..."Aren't they f* great!!?"
In my view, if there's a piano there you're tits on a bull. You should be playing the circular montunos and wondering what happened to '1'.....good luck.
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The guys I'm playing with are a trio with a 3 1/2 hour gig. If I function as a horn, I'm contributing something -- otherwise the only solo instrument is the piano. With the guitar, the pianist can play montunos behind a solo. Last time, they had me play some melodies and a lot of solos. Originally Posted by Hugo Gainly
If I try to function as a rhythm instrument I have to remember "First, do no harm". I might be able to phrase with a simple montuno, but if the pianist starts doing rhythmic displacement, I probably won't be helping.
Since they sounded great without me, I can always get to that by simply laying out. The challenge is not to lose sight of that fact.
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Sorry, I was just offering a few experiences on the guitar in an folkloric acoustic afro-cuban band. There was already a lot of more detailed advice. To be frank, expecting to function constructively as a uninformed pick up in a highly stylised music smacks of arrogance.
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I hope it didn't seem like I was arguing with anything you posted. Furthest thing from my mind. I appreciate the posts. Originally Posted by Hugo Gainly
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or confidence Originally Posted by Hugo Gainly
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I just finished a chart that goes from Bembe to uptempo swing (bop) back and forth.I couldn't find any site on the net to notate Bembe, so I listened to Shelly Manne and wrote out what he did. It sounds good on Musescore, but I haven't gotten it played live yet. I asked one of the drummers if he could play an Afro-Cuban 12/8 beat, and he said, "Bembe?" so that's one band that can play it. I don't want to embarrass a drummer like I did with an If jazz-rock chart I wrote. It switched from 12/8 to 4/4 and he couldn't do it. He got up from the set and said "I give up". Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Salsa isn't doing well now . A trumpet player in one band I play in (who played with Ray Barretto for years, and played on 250 Latin albums) is playing accordion at retirement homes.
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Salsa is a dance form named and popularized in the US it incorporated many Cuban dance styles but the NY styles became what we know as Salsa. Like any style it morphed incorporating more folklorico and Rumba, led by the Cubans you got Songo and later Timba which are the new styles of Salsa. Bembe is folkloric but the bell pattern is used in many 6/8 forms now. 2 of the best examples are Spanish Harlem Orchestra for the most current state of NY salsa. For combining folkloric and Rumba with Jazz (bop in particular) Fort Apache led the charge and did what Blakey was doing only with authentic rhythms played by the best Rumberos of the day.(Art would have been happy) Ray Barretto was the greatest of the greats both in the evolution of Salsa and then his last albums of some of the best latin jazz ever and incorporating many of the Cuban as well as Puerto Rican folk and dance styles. Getting to play with your trumpeter must be a real treat!
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Yeah, he's unusual in that he studied with George Russell at the NEC of Music, so he's got a very strong background in jazz as well as Latin. He's also half Cuban and half Jewish, and has put out some albums under his own name that get airplay on WBAI and WBGO.
I listen to Felipe Luciano's show Latin Roots on BAI every Sunday afternoon. He has Eddie Palmieri as a phone guest, who's a total pisser and great pianist.
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Im in CA. now but originally from NJ. The stories from the old guard of Salsa are priceless. A lot of people dont know that the Jewish woman dancers were legendary at the Palladium and for a while had their own night. I thought the last Tito album with Eddie was incredible. Just like swing gradually morphed into different forms. "latin " dance music has done the same thing and in the same way have lost some of their dance popularity, however I think now the Cubans in particular are pushing the edges of possibility in Jazz and what have been the dance forms. Theres also a very bad ass latin music culture in San Francisco. Jazz isnt dead and either is Salsa but theyre different now and enjoyed differently now as well. Yesterday on the radio I heard Seis de solar followed by Hip hop an unimaginable combination not that long ago.
I hosted Ritmo Latino on NPR affiliate KCBX for a few years so got to listen to lots of great music and meet a few of the greats.
May the clave be with you
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Having just played with some salsa players for the first two times, I just could not have been more impressed. Originally Posted by Rickco
Great musicians, incredibly welcoming and joyous in their approach to both the music and the relationships.
Wonderful experience.
One thing that surprised me is how separate the salsa and jazz worlds are -- in spite of the fact that there are musicians in each world who can play the other style.
Pro players gigging regularly in the same community for decades and had never crossed paths.
And one last thought: it was exhilirating playing jazz tunes and having people spontaneously start dancing.
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I used to work with some jazz musicians who had some surprising connections with the Salsa bands of yesteryear.. Aaron Sachs, who was once known as the 'white Charlie Parker' back in the 40s used to make his living writing Salsa charts for some of the big Salsa bands of the 60s. Originally Posted by Rickco
One time he heard one of his charts being played by the Louis Belson big band on the radio.
It turned out Belson dug the chart so much, that he got one of his guys to copy it, and figured that Salsa musicians didn't listen to jazz that much, and he could get away with it.
He was amazed to find out it was written by a white jazz musician, and apologized when Aaron got in touch with him to tell him that he recorded his chart!
They managed to work something out.
Another guy I played with a lot was Bobby Nelson, who played with Charlie Palmieri and other bands through the years. He told me a story about working in some country in Latin America for some wealthy dude. On a break, the guy led the band into a big room that had nothing but a huge table in it. On the table was a huge mountain of coke for the band!
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