Salsa City Forum » Salsa Music and Dance » The Music

Sorry Hugh but you need to listen to the old time original ChaChaCha. Which although not as fast as some Salsa speeds is still a quick tempo, The western version of the ‘chasse’ is a much bigger movement than the original cuban ChaChaCha which was more of a hiccup in the movement, any good dancer can add a ChaChaCha pattern to a lot of Salsa music.

And the Clave pattern you just described is the Rumba pattern not the Son.

Sorry Got myself wrong on the Clave pattern. Just learning a Bongo pattern that confused my brain.

Son is
1, 2 and, 4, 6, 7

Rumba is
1, 2 and, 4 and, 6, 7

Please cite some actual tracks which you consider to be “old time original ChaChaCha”, as an illustration.

To get back to your assertion that “Speed of the music also has no bearing on the style” - that’s simply wrong. To quote Ed Uribe in his book The Essence of Afro-Cuban Percussion & Drum Set, (talking about the relationship between the percussion parts in son montuno and mambo) “Very often what distinguishes one of these styles from another is only the tempo.”

The clave pattern I described is the son clave. The rumba clave (yambu and guaguancó) is: one, two-and-a-half, four-and-a-half, six, seven. (The third note is half a beat later than in the son clave.)

I think we’re arguing sematics here. Changing the tempo of a piece doesn’t change it’s essence especially if the same rhythmical elements are involved.

A ChaChaCha is still the same irregardless of its speed, you may label it differently but it’s essence is still the same.

There are also different varieties of ChaChaCha such as Mambo, Bolero, Samba etc. Pachanga cross overs are qute common. Fruko’s Chachacha Con Pachanga is an example.
http://www.sternsmusic.com/discography_detailed/1578

Check out this article by Paul F Clifford for a brief historical perspective of ChaChaCha’s development.
http://www.geocities.com/sd_au/mambo/sdhmambo.htm

Fast examples:
Hansel Y Raul - Kuku-Cha Ku-Cha
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004ZDW5/102-6793485-1 252910?v=glance
This is almost undancable as a ChaChaCha but the rhythm is still there in the music.

Check out this album track:
14. Bei Mir Bist Du Schon/La Furiosa - Jack Costanzo/Don Swan
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002U4Q/102-6793485-1 252910?v=glance

Slower more danceable tracks:
Ruben Gonzales - 1. Chanchullo
Ruben Gonzales - 10. Rico Vacilon
http://music.yahoo.com/release/130924

You will often see good dancers utilising a ChaChaCha rhythm within a lot of ‘standard’ Salsa music. Sonora Carruseles do it quite a lot. Micaela has a ChaChaCha rhythm on the 3&4 this does not make it a ChaChaCha but it is a good example of various ‘styles’ (Boogaloo/Pachanga) combining in a ‘Salsa’ track.

Yeah, OK. My position is that a cha-cha-chá (for instance) is not still a cha-cha-chá regardless of it’s speed. Speed it up too much and it ceases to be a cha-cha-chá. Of course the essence is the same for all the son derived styles - the clave, the tumbao from the congas, and the rest of the percussion. The essence is adjusted to create the various styles.

Although the Fruko track has chachacha in it’s title, it doesn’t sound like a cha-cha-chá to me and the Hansel Y Raul track is definitely not one. These strike me as more novelty numbers than “old time original ChaChaCha”.

The Fruko track is an illustration of a mix of styles. The other tracks utilise the ChaChaCha rhythm differently than normal ie 3&4. It’s hard to find listenable versions online. :)

I’ll put up a list of “old time original ChaChaCha” when I’ve got time, but some of it is hard to get hold of!
La Furiosa is a classic example, Tito’s got some so has Joe Cuba, Poncho Sanchez, Beny Moore if you can find any.

A lot the ‘old time’ stuff was being pioneered in the 50s, so there was a lot of experimentation and styles weren’t set then. However if you can listen to a lot of the ‘old stuff’ it is generally a lot better than the modern music musically. But all so a lot more out there...

I’ve read the discussion of clave, but I don’t understand it’s importance “to the dancer”. To the musician, the song may form around this rhythm element but as a dancer, I’m trying to find count one. Once I start dancing, I never feel any connection to the clave beats. I don’t try to step on them even when syncopating. Rather, if anything, I’m counting the 8 beat mini phrases in the music. If I do syncopate in some sort of shine situation, again I want to find 1. Sooooo am I totally missing some sort of magical experience of dancing 8 Beat patterns while my body feels that Clave rhythm. I have a feeling a musician would answer this question totally differently than a dancer.

One famous dancer said “We don’t dance to the music, we want to 'dance the music'” Another special dance teacher of my also stated “the dancers are another member of the band” and as such the rhythm of steps must fit and add to the music (not distract or depart from the whole)... For some reason, these messages always come back to me when people get caught up in music discussions.

You answered the question in your first paragraph in your second paragraph, PAS. The difference between musician and dancer need not be so very great. Sometimes they’re the same people.

As a dancer, knowing where the clave is doesen’t mean you want to mark every clave beat with a special step, any more than a musician would want to hit every clave beat. Unless, of course, he was playing the claves.

“One”, to me, is beat one of the three-side of the clave. So finding “one” is finding the clave. It’s not always trivial to distinguish “one” from “five” when you’re actually dancing in a club situation. I think that’s what prompts a lot of the interest in “clave” from dancers.

Discussion helps us get our thoughts clear and helps us learn, so I don’t see it as getting “caught up”.

And of course, if dancing on two isn’t hard enough for you, I once saw a workshop advertised called ‘dancing on clave’.

Reminds me of the post I saw on another list when someone said that they danced on the ‘and’ (as in, one and two and...) because it was really cool to be able to do something nobody else could do. Only downside was that they couldn’t find anyone to dance with.

Just a minor point, so that nobody makes the same mistake I did once - ‘clave’ is a Spanish word, so it’s pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, the ‘a’ as in Bath and the ‘e’ as in ‘cliché’.

Hugh,

Good points but I really wonder if you are listening for the clave beat when you start dancing with a partner. Next time you dance, try to figure if you actually listen for the clave to find count one or hear something else in the music that does it. I have my own suspicions.

For example, I learned many dances from Ballroom to Country before Salsa. Many of these dances were not Latin and so I learned to hear count 1 in a different way than Clave...