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The Timba Story (Part 4/4)

23/5/2018

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Author: Uroš Švagan
Estimated read time: 10 minutes

This article is part of a four-part saga about timba history and development.
​

​In previous articles we explored timba as the sound of the Cuban economic crisis. We described its origins, the rise and fall of its popularity. Nowadays, the genre is regaining its former glory. In 2008, Alexander Abreu formed Havana D’Primera in order to restore the image to the genre.
These days, Cuba is on its (very slow) path to prosperity, therefore contemporary timba does not feed on the scourge of crisis. Its frontmen are not the most scandalously dressed Cubans anymore, and do not worship capitalist values in their performances and lyrics. But it is also true that what was scandalous in the 1990s, became the norm in the new millennium. The crown of the main provocateurs has been passed to hip hop and reggaeton artists. Meanwhile, timba has grown up and built its competitive advantage purely on music. Contemporary timba seems slightly more melodic, fuses influences from even wider range of musical genres, more often integrates Cuban folklore, revives the forgotten genres such as pilón, incorporates reggaeton, as well as wider Caribbean musical styles.

The sound of timba recordings are much clearer today then they were in the 1990s. Cuba has invested a lot into state-of-the-art studios. As technology advances, prices of professional recording equipment became much more reasonable, and many musicians such as Manolito Simonet have started building their studios in the basements of their homes.
Timba scene is still not a high-growth phenomenon, but does deliver a great new orchestra every once in a while. Besides Havana D’Primera, the new stars of timba are artists such as El Niño y la Verdad, El Noro y 1era Clase, and Maykel Blanco y Su Salsa Mayor.

Furthermore, timba is slowly paving its way for an international breakthrough. The largest timba scene outside of Cuba is in Peru with its most popular band Barbaro Fines y Su Mayimbe. A few bands are active in the United States, the most popular among dancers being Timbalive. Europe does not fall short on timba bands with the undisputed kings of the scene being the Swedish band Calle Real.
​
A renewed interest in timba would have probably never occurred without the rising popularity of Cuban dances. The international music media is still ignorant about timba and rather seems to be caught in the loop of revivalist projects that have been playing the same old broken record from before the revolution. Perhaps this ignorance might serve as an indication of the US influence over the music industry.

Internationally, an underground rock concert will still catch much more media attention than a timba concert, even though the latter will bring in a much larger audience. The other reason preventing a big breakthrough as a genre might be the level of skills and devotion needed to perform such music.

​Timba songs might as well be less fit for the average western audience whose attention span for a song is 4 minutes at a maximum, while good timba songs narrate a story much longer. 
​In Cuba, timba is compelled to compete with imported music styles which can be produced by an averagely skilled computer geek and are much simpler in form. As such it is much closer to Cuban youth. Reggaeton is on one hand quite different from timba, but its approach resembles the timba in the 1990s. Provocative lyrics, scandalous fashion, the glorification of materialism, sex, and prostitution. To compete purely with musical elements is becoming an increasingly difficult task even in Cuba. But nevertheless, timba is regaining its share in the Cuban media, and is becoming ever more popular.
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​The Timba Story (Part 3/4)

23/5/2018

1 Comment

 
Author: Uroš Švagan
Estimated read time: 10 minutes

This article is part of a four-part saga about timba history and development.

​The rise and fall of timba

In the previous articles we described the qualities that make timba such a unique music genre, and the artists that contributed to its development. In this article we explore the rise and fall of timba itself.

The key role in the development of timba is largely attributed to the flutist José Luis Cortés 'El Tosco'. In the 1970s El Tosco was a member of Los Van Van, but switched to Irakere in the 1980’s. In 1988 he formed a side project, a sort of super group called Nueva Generación. Their ambitious goal was to set future direction of Cuban music. El Tosco established the concept and the structure of the music which is being followed by timba musicians to this day. In fact, it is hard to say that he came up with something totally new - what El Tosco did differently was to collect existing concepts from different music genres, and connected them in a very intelligent way. He renamed the group to NG La Banda, to allow for alternative sarcastic interpretations of the NG abbreviation. Their first album was released in 1989, under the title En La Calle (On the street).

1989 was the year when the Eastern Bloc started collapsing. Cuba lost its main export destination, leading to economic meltdown, the período especial. To alleviate the pain, the country started opening up by promoting tourism, opening music venues and reviving a bustling nightlife in its major cities. To cope with inflation it legalized the US dollar and stimulated simple entrepreneurial concepts. Since it couldn’t pay salaries to musicians anymore, the government finally let the artists keep the money from their record and ticket sales.

​Tourists attended concerts and spent their dollars. As a result, timba artists came out as the winners of the economic crisis. When the average salary in Cuba was a mere $20 a month, the most popular timba artists could earn as much as $12.000. They became the role models who provided a major infusion of hope that there is the way out of the miserable situation. Timba offered an escapist route, thriving on the wasteland of Cuban economy.
The freedom of expression became much greater. In crisis, people often turn to religious beliefs, and Santeria was no longer the underground religion, but became a new craze. For the first time after the revolution, artists started coming out as santeros, with public displays of religious feelings. Adalberto Alvarez wrote his tribute to all Orishas ¿Y que tú quieres que te den? (What do you want them to give you?).

​Others followed. A fusion with Cuban rumba became a common practice in popular dance music, one of the first cases being NG La Banda's song Los Sitios Entero (The Entire Los Sitios Neighbourhood). The same band caused a scandal with La Bruja  (The Witch), the song with broke the silence about the renewed wave of prostitution.
Manolín 'El Médico de la Salsa' provoked the government by singing about moving to Miami in his song Que Le Llegue Mi Mano (Let my hand reach him [Cuban]). In the El Puente (Bridge) coro, Manolin sang about the bridge between Havana and Miami, which apparently some officials took too literally. Seemingly dumb lyrics were in fact the reflection of the street sentiment. Other timba protagonists avoided provocation, but emphasized musical innovation, such as Paulo FG y Su Élite, Manolito Simonet y Su Trabuco in Issac Delgado.
​In 1997 timbamania was at its peak, and major record labels started showing interest. The crown of the kings of provocation and vulgarity has by that time been passed to Charanga Habanera. The Communist Youth Union invited them to the celebration at the World Festival of Youth and Students. The performance caused a scandal for being a complete contradiction to the values of communism. The band landed onstage with helicopter, and in the heat of the moment, one of the singers, Michel Maza performed a great deal of sexually explicit moves, took off his shirt and suggested taking off his pants, encouraging the audience to break the security barrier, as he later did himself. 
Charanga's songs frequently praised materialism, sex tourism and drugs. Such an outburst would have probably gone completely unnoticed in a small club, but was at that time viewed by 100.000 people and recorded by multiple international TV stations.
​
The government’s response was excessive, and resulted in six month ban of Charanga Habanera from radio as well as from live performances. Timba clubs came under scrutiny of the authorities, and regular raids under a pretense of anti-prostitution measures struck a serious blow to timba. 
A fuel to the fire was added by Manolín 'El Médico de la Salsa', who released the aforementioned songs during the greatest repression. Manolin subsequently carried out his ‘threats’ and migrated to the States where he unintentionally buried his career, as the US audience was not receptive to timba. He was later followed to the US by Issac Delgado, who had to adopt his music greatly to the tastes of American salsa listeners. 
In Cuba, musicians started avoiding provocation and adopted their lyrics for subsequent releases. Paulo FG y Su Elite seemed to have lost their creativity. Internationally, timba was completely overshadowed by Buena Vista Social Club, a project started by American multiinstrumentalist and composer Ry Cooder with good connections in the American music industry and thus, a great deal of support from the multinational record companies.

But the music itself has never really gone into a decline. In merely lost its popularity at a certain time due to lack of support from media and Cuban government. The undescribable momentum that was felt by those who were a part of it was gone. Charanga Habanera apologized and could perform after a complete reformation of the cast. The band Lazarito Valdés y Su Bamboleo was born, and later Leonel Limonta y Azúcar Negra from it. Manolito Simonet y Su Trabuco released their breakthrough album Marcando La Distancia in 1998, when the repression was already taking place.

By that time, timba was also adopted by the precursors of the genre such as Los Van Van, Orquesta Revé, and Adalberto Álvarez. Perhaps the biggest recognition that timba has ever received was the Grammy for the Los Van Van album Llego Van Van. upy left Van Van in 2001 after 32 years with them, and formed Pupy y Los Que Son Son.

In the beginning of the new millennium, reggaeton started gaining mainstream popularity in Cuba. When it has already seemed that timba would never become popular again, the former trumpet player from Paulo FG y Su Élite formed his own band in 2008, called Havana D'Primera… 

Continued in Part 4.
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​The Timba Story (Part 2/4)

23/5/2018

1 Comment

 
Author: Uroš Švagan
Estimated read time: 10 minutes

This article is part of a four-part saga about timba history and development.
​
In the previous article we emphasized the qualities of timba. Now, we are ready to move forward to the social circumstances that contributed to its development, as well as the predecessors of timba - the artists that contributed to its sound with their innovations before timba's time. 

The Cuban revolution and social change

In January 1959 Fidel Castro enters Havana. What followed the revolution was nationalization, a dispute with the US, and the subsequent decline of the tourist industry. Cuban music and the dance industries started going through radical changes. In 1962, the ENA (Escuelas Nacionales de Arte) was established as the school that enabled many Cubans access to free music education. The same year saw the formation of Conjunto Folklórico Nacional, a dance group that is still reviving the wide spectrum of Cuban folkloric dances.

However, most post-revolutionary changes were not so positive. Cuban record companies were nationalized into EGREM (Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales), which established and held a monopoly for decades. Dance clubs were closing, musicians became state employees with regular salaries independent of the record and ticket sales. Successful musicians started emigrating. Thus, Cuban music started separating into the Cuban music in the United States, and the one at home on the island.

Cuban musical crisis and the start of a new fire

In the 60's and 70's island dance music ran into a huge crisis. The only thriving musical concept became the nueva trova, a term describing patriotic revolution worshiping singer-songwriters with guitars. In 1963, Pello El Afrokan created a new rhythm called mozambique, which remained completely local and insignificant in comparison to prerevolutionary genres of the worldwide fame, such as mambo, chacha, son, etc. 
Dance music was represented by a few charanga groups, a term describing bands consisting of mostly string and wind instruments. A few examples include Orquesta Aragón, Ritmo Oriental, Original de Manzanillo and Maravilla de Florida. Each of them was looking for the new way to modernize their music in order to regain popularity.

Instead, Cubans started tuning into the western rock. Beach Boys and Beatles became so popular that Cuban government banned them from radio waves. But Cuban music started to soak up the new influences. Bands of the time started developing asound that was western enough to please the audiences, but Cuban enough to be acceptable for the authorities. This description fits Orquesta Revé to a degree, and fits Los Van Van perfectly.

Los Van Van first recordings sounded closer to Beatles than to Cuban son. Juan Formell, the founder of Los Van Van, once admitted he was not even remotely interested in Cuban music in the beginning – all he wanted to play was rock'n'roll. Los Van Van called their rhythm songo. For the first time, Cuban music has integrated a bass guitar, electric piano, and rock drums.

Ritmo Oriental on the other hand never introduced a kick drum, but used a completely unusual set of timbales and the foot pedal to kick the cowbell.

The status of great innovators must also be awarded to Irakere, the band that put the batá drums and African roots rhythms into their psychedelic funk-jazz fusion. At the time, Cuban bands almost competed with each other who would come up with the most innovative rhythm. 
In the meantime, Cuban music in the United States remained more faithful to its roots in son. In 1970’s, the migration of Latinos into the US led to the development of salsa. When US salsa artists (Héctor Lavoe, Fania All Stars, etc.) first came to Havana in 1979, their performance was poorly received, and marked as the capitalist falsification of Cuban music. Only a couple of years later, a very positive reception of Venezuelan Oscar D'León triggered a short period of salsa boom in Cuba. As most of elements of salsa had already been present in Cuban son, it is hard to consider off-island salsa to be a major influence on timba.

Nevertheless, the salsa boom triggered a renewed interest in son on the island. In the 1980s, Adalberto Álvarez y Su Son drew their sound closer to salsa. To regain popularity, Los Van Van introduced trombones to their instrumentation, but kept the charanga and rock elements in their music. They emphasized the clave rhythmic backbone, but started using rumba clave instead of the more mainstream son clave pattern. Orquesta Revé made similar adjustments, but remained deeply rooted in changüí, the predecesor of son. This brief period of imported salsa was soon to be overshadowed by domestic artists, with music closer to the taste of Cuban audiences.

Even though the aforementioned bands did not start the timba movement, they contributed with their innovations to the sound of the modern Cuban dance music. These bands served as talent agencies for musicians that began innovating timba some decades later. In the next article we outline how timba started from these innovations.  Let's start by teleporting ourselves to 1989, the year that marks the release of the first timba album proper.

Continued in Part 3.
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The Timba Story (Part 1/4)

23/5/2018

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Author: Uroš Švagan
Estimated read time: 10 minutes

This article is part of a four-part saga about timba history and development.
​

​Timba is a genre of contemporary Cuban dance music, which innovatively summarizes the entire unique cultural heritage of the nation and merges it with influences from the western music genres. When exploring this heritage, it reaches deep into the roots of African and European ancestors, draws inspiration from the Cuban folklore as well as imported music styles without preconceptions, such as reggaeton, funk, rock, etc. Regardless of influences, it remains distinctly Caribbean and uniquely Cuban music.
Complex, but danceable and upbeat

Furthermore, timba is one of the richest, most sophisticated, and dynamic contemporary popular music genres. While most popular music can be performed by amateur musicians, timba requires a high degree of virtuosity, ability to improvise, and years of rehearsal. Timba can both satisfy an average Joe seeking simplicity, as well as the most demanding professional's heart, looking for complexity. ​
Timba's rhythmic structures use autochthonous instruments in a highly syncopated manner, completely incomparable to any other style of music. Its melodic and harmonic structures can easily be compared to jazz and sophisticated chansons. From a lyrical point of view, timba is highly contradictory. On one hand it deals with deeply religious subjects and, on the other hand, with extremely obscene ones. In between the seemingly innocent lines lacking complexity is the whole universe of metaphoric provocations, reflecting the sentiment of the Cuban street. Nevertheless, timba is a very pleasurable and upbeat despite the aforementioned complexity. Even when touching the darker subjects, it always provides much hope and bittersweet optimism. Its syncopated rhythm pushes your body into a hard-to-remain-still mode, while its melodies and harmonies can bring you to tears. Timba is a mirror of the Cuban soul.

Band and song structure

Timba bands are the size of small orchestras, numbering around 15 in strength, which  makes the music quite saturated. The song structure typically avoids the verse-chorus form, but instead implements a more diverse structure where the tension is built using the form resembling a dramatic arc. The songs typically begin with the narrative part, where the story slowly develops. In the montuno section that follows, the song achieves its climax, where the music becomes very lively with a great deal of cunning improvisation.

​Montuno is usually the longest part of the song that gives the dancers a proper chance to show off. Finally, a falling action is followed by denouement. These song segments can be further divided into so called ‘gears’, which define the energy level of a song part. Dancers learn to recognize the song parts, so that they can respond with the energy and movements appropriate for the intensity of the song part.
Frontmen typically signal gear changes to the instrumentalists using a set of agreed upon hand gestures, shouts, or otherwise. The song evolution continues even after the album is released. Inventive improvisation enables the bands to form new song parts during live performances, so each song can sound quite differently on each performance. Live gigs often reach the climax when bands invite professional dances to the stage. Together with the band they worship either the female bodies or the divine beings of Santeria. 
Let's get started then!

​Timba was invented in the end of 80's and the beginning of 90's, peaking in popularity at around 1995. These days timba might not be as popular as it once was, but is actually a constantly developing music genre gaining in quality and soaking in ever more influences. Timba is always aligned with trends, but never falls prey to them.
​
In this series of articles we will present how timba came into existence through social, economic, and political circumstances, and through musical innovations after the Cuban revolution. We will explore its rise and its fall in the 90's. The last article will be dedicated to the modern timba, which is being revived by musicians and dance instructors all over the world. But, when searching for the roots of timba, one can always trace them further back into the history, to the times of indigenous civilizations, Christopher Columbus, the slave trade, and Africa.

​Continued in Part 2.
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Hearing the difference between (cuban) salsa and timba music

7/12/2017

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A short timba primer for the dancer

Author: Jan Bervar
Estimated read time: 10 minutes

At the beginning of one's Casino ("cuban salsa") dance journey people often ask about the difference of modern cuban dance music to other forms of "salsa". Experienced dancers quickly reply that you "just feel" that the music playing is Cuban (as opposed to, Puertorican, Colombian, etc.), which is not the most helpful of answers. This article tries to explain, in simplified terms, where that intuitive feeling comes from, from a dancer's perspective.


What is "salsa" anyway?

My favorite definition of salsa is that of a musical genre, born in the United States (New York) during the 1970s, from the roots of Cuban son music.

Technically, we can describe a salsa song as:
  • The rhythmic backbone of the song is the Son clave rhythm
  • There is a specific set of instruments playing (usually congas, bongos, clave, timbales, maracas, guiro, bass, piano, trumpets, trombones)
  • core rhytmic instruments are playing standardized patterns ("tumbaos" or "guajeos"), mostly son-derived, especially the conga drums, bass, and piano
  • The song consists of two main parts - the cuerpo (body), where the initial lyrcs are exposed, follwed by the montuno (mountain, incline), where the intensity of song increases, melodic instruments perform their solos, and singing becomes a series of singer-choir exchanges

If music matching this description was and is still produced in Cuba, we can call it Cuban salsa. If it is produced outside of Cuba, it is typically classified as salsa dura - the style faithful to the 1970-era Fania Records period, or salsa romantica, a more recent style mixed with pop structure and hooks.

Listen to two examples of modern salsa songs: one example of cuban salsa (by by Dan Den), and one Puerto Rican salsa dura (by El Gran Combo) here:

Timba: diversity, virtuosity, aggression

​The musical genre of timba emerged from the salsa and songo genres in the late 1980s, when Cuban musicians reacted to the downfall of the Soviet Union - and the resulting period of economic hardship in Cuba - with a musical revolution. They took the foundation of son, salsa, and songo genres, made them more dynamic, showing off their instrumental virtuosity, and integrating the rich legacy of Cuban musical history - most notably Cuban rumba - into it.

We can describe a timba song as follows (from the most, to the least obvious):
​
  • The song is no longer only a cuerpo/montuno affair, but has many segments (typically called "gears", like in a car) with which it controls its energy: the most characteristic of timba is a gear called PRESION (literally, "pressure"), where, by eliminating specific instruments - typically bass and congas - the song paradoxically emotionally explodes and demands a radical change in dancing.
  • Instruments are no longer playing standard patterns; instead, musicians show off and invent new, funkier, and often song-specific rhytmic patterns, which makes timba rhythms more complex and harder to dance to for beginners, compared to salsa.
  • The rhythmic backbone of the song is often the rumba clave rhythm.
  • New instruments are added to the typical salsa set, most notably rock drums and the electric guitar.

Enough of theory, let's see how timba sounds like :)

Ese Soy Yo by Rene Alvarez y su Cuban Combination
First, let's illustrate the "gears" that make timba more dynamic than salsa. Ese Soy Yo starts off like a salsa song, with a romantic and low-key intro, which uses a bridge (1:22-1:32) to transition to its montuno, Then, at 2:33-2:43 everything changes with the first PRESION ("orgasmic" moment of the song), considerably lifting the energy level in the song, followed by another presion at 3:14-3:24, even more energetic than the first one. With a good timba song, you should be screaming "manos pa'rriba!" ("hands in the air!") during presion gears, and going absolutely dance-crazy (despelote, tembleque) to honour those special timba moments :)

​
Mi Musica by Alexander Abreu and Havana D'Primera

Mi Musica, a timba anthem, has as many as 5 presion parts:  1:59-2:10, 2:58-3:11, 3:40-4:02, 4:30-4:52, and 5:10-5:33

​Instrumental patterns

A very nice, if mechanic, example of the difference between the instrumental patterns in salsa and timba is at 8:35 in this video, which shows how the same song would be approached by a salsa and a timba band. Here, you can spot the standard patterns of (US, son-based) salsa vs the funky patterns of timba.


​Not everything Cuban after 1989 is Timba!


Cubans still produce salsa songs, as witnessed by the first musical example in this article, therefore all Casino is not danced exclusively to timba music. Another popular modern development is the crossover between timba and reggaeton, which is best represented by the music of Los 4: songs in rumba clave, with metales (trumpets and trombones), but essentially a reggaeton beat and reggaeton lyrics on top.
Now, to internalize these "rules" and make them part of your intuition, listen to tons of music and enjoy your timba dance journey <3
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