by jorge » Fri Jul 03, 2009 2:00 pm
I think "explaining" clave is only a tiny part of learning to play in clave. Mongo was right, either you feel the clave or you don't. But it goes beyond that, and it is not as hopeless as that may make it sound. Clave is a cultural thing, but it is not genetic. I have played with some AfroCubans who felt the clave and NEVER heard them cross it or waver in their timing. I have also played with other AfroCubans who sometimes cross the clave, waver in their timing, sing or play on the wrong side of the clave, and these are some of the people who get the most bent out of shape if they think someone is playing it wrong. Problem is, sometimes they are the ones who are off and they are too ignorant, arrogant, or drunk to realize it. So "feeling" the clave is not a guarantee that you play it right. Feeling it is necessary but not sufficient.
So how does a person LEARN to feel the clave? Again, this is not a genetic trait limited to AfroCubans, it is a learned skill. The problem is that most people underestimate the amount of practice it takes to learn the skill. In my 38 years of playing rumba, the only way I have seen that reliably produces people who can play clave correctly, in time and not crossed relative to the rhythm and melody, is hundreds of hours of playing clave in settings where if you drop a beat or go off time or cross the clave, you get criticized and have to correct yourself immediately. La universidad de la calle, it is not warm and fuzzy, but it works. All the intellectual and theoretical explanations may be nice for Juilliard trained music theorists and performers, but these explanations don't seem to produce percussionists who can play in clave. In fact, many many professional and well trained musicians, including percussionists, have failed to learn to play in clave. Some of them don't even realize it when they go off, they happily play on oblivious to the crossed clave.
You just have to play clave for hundreds or thousands of hours, get yelled at immediately when you go off even a few milliseconds or cross the clave (or yell at yourself if you can train yourself to listen objectively to your own playing and be honestly self-critical) and have the self discipline to repeatedly correct yourself by listening for the right cues in the music. In rumba, locking in with the cata (guagua) so the 2 instruments sound like 1 is key. Playing cata helps a lot too, because you are locking in with the clave from the other perspective. If either the clave or the cata is off, even just a little bit (we are talking milliseconds here), you won't be able to lock in, so don't just give the cata sticks or the clave to an inexperienced player and expect it to sound right. Listening for the clave (not so much the instrument but the timing) in every (clave based) song you listen to helps a lot too. Even singing while tapping clave with one hand on your leg while you are walking down the street helps (just don't get hit by a truck or fall in a hole). Being obsessive compulsive probably helps too, although I have never seen an actual study on this. Growing up in Cuba is an advantage, because most of the music you hear is in clave, usually (not always) played correctly. But even being AfroCuban, born and raised in Cuba, does not guarantee that you will "have clave", you still have to practice it to internalize the feeling. I have even played for AfroCuban dance classes taught by ENA-trained AfroCuban choreographers who sometimes get their clave mixed up. So AfroCubans don't automatically have clave, they still have to work at it, but they do a lot better than most of the rest of us. Of course a lot of Cubans have put in their hundreds of hours by the time they are 5 years old (or even before they are born!). Growing up in other countries where you hear salsa (often with the clave crossed once or many times during each song) or worse, bachata, cumbia, merengue, jazz, latin jazz, rock, or other music where clave is not central to the art form, you hear and internalize wrong timing and then have to unlearn it and relearn it right. Unlearning/relearning is difficult, time consuming, and painful and many people never get there.
So I think explaining clave is a start, but then you have to put in the time and work to internalize the clave, so the main thing you need is the commitment to do it. Don't fall into the trap of underestimating those 2 little wood sticks!