David and Tone
Thanks for all the great discussion
Governing principle or Rhythmic Key
The governing principle is often expressed in an offbeat/on-beat motif - either three offbeats with four on-beats, or four offbeats with three on-beat
The clave concept is way of mapping time, giving an agreed shape that all players can use as a reference. But it shouldn't be understood as a straight jacket of course.
....using the right vocabulary inside that invisible map, following the invisible curves of the music.
...so well stated.
Not being born into the tradition,(and not living in a great percussion place like Rio or SanFran area) it is theoretical discussions like the above that have really helped me begin to “get it”.
Even within Samba there is quite a distinction between the samba pretta ( the black Samba) and Samba do branco (white Samba). The black Samba which you will hear in the favellas and suburbs is much more rhytmical, strong and feisty ; while the withe samba of Lapa is a much softer affair. I guess you have guessed which one I prefer...”
I recently read “Arsenio Rodriquez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music” by David F. Garcia
He devotes an entire chapter to a very similar distinction in Cuban music in the 1940's as Arsenio was developing his style, which came to be known as “Negro y Macho”
From the book: …”there were two styles, a simple style and an afro style. Arsenio began to play in an afro style, which was more difficult and had more sabor (flavor,feel).”
Estilo Negro:Black,Modern, progressive,Masculine, Difficult, Slow, Sonero
Estilo Blanco:White, Passe’, Feminine / small sound, Simple, Fast, Guarachero
“Although these terms signified the racial and class background of groups audiences as well as notions of musical authenticity, complexity, and progressiveness,actual musical features such as tempo and, most important, sonic power and fullness also indexed musical blackness and masculinity”
Different diasporic societies/cultures, great similarities in the nature of musical evolution/development.
Slightly OT
I love when writers are able to craft the words that describe the essence of music and/or musical experience.
Here is another quote from the book.
Written by Fernando Ortiz (a Cuban Musicologist, I believe) in 1951,giving his own interpretation of the essence of the Mambo
"It is all nothing more than a link of lines coordinated in a
weave that is composed of the spontaneity of each rhythm, individually played to each musician’s whim, but whose
threads are
crossed and
interlaced into one
warp...Although arbitrary and capricious, there is no "anarchy" or "lack of order", but rather a wonderful concert of individual freedoms taken to the maximum within a minimal but unshakable structural arrangement….Also this occurs only…in that precise paroxysmal moment characteristic of
musica afrocubana."
Nails it...as far as I'm concerned
...and now back to our Topic....
~Joseph