Manolín’s second and more famous contribution to Me sube la fiebre was Para el llanto. It has three things in common with Piloto's Me sube -- it was re-recorded on the second CD, it’s still played in concert today by both Charanga Habanera and Charanga Forever; and it’s one of greatest tracks of the whole timba genre. Let’s start with the first measure. Listen to the first two notes of the horns and then listen to the clave answer them two beats later. The horns are playing the rhythm pattern of the first two notes of 3-2 clave, but they’re playing them on the "2" side, just as the congas do in guaguancó. In traditional salsa arranging, the horns would be used to accentuate the clave, but in Cuban timba, everything is a conversation. At 0:09, the conversation consists of the band hitting two punches in unison and the large conga echoing them a split second later, with the band getting in the last word with one more sharp stab before Vera enters with the short, but hook-laden cuerpo. [audio example 16] Two quick verses are answered by "y que te quedes tranquila y para el llanto que no es para tanto". What follows, at 0:37, is astounding - like a timbafied Bach Mass - [audio example 17] - each element of the band is playing a different part, but each part is based on melodic fragments derived from one musical theme - “y que te quedes tranquila y para el llanto que no es para tanto”. The voices echo the lead vocal, but extend the length of the phrase by repeating "y te quedes" twice, and then repeat this longer phrase. Meanwhile the horns cycle a shorter instrumental variation on "traquila y para el llanto" -- so that we wind up with various sections of the original melody looping against each other in a myriad of wonderful ways. But there’s more! Close your eyes and listen to the piano during this section. Repeated octaves lead into a phrase which echoes the main theme, adding a third voice to the canon, but then at 0:43 he breaks into a series of ascending blues licks which by some miracle fit perfectly into the texture. At 0:47 the piano joins the canon in earnest, playing still another fragment of the main melody and building into the entrance of the montuno. Finally, listen to the bass during this section. It would all be a well-intentioned train wreck without Pedro Pablo’s bassline. He had been playing long legato tones up to this point but when the "chorale" comes in he switches to short, syncopated interjections, leaving enough silence to let the complex counterpoint shine through. All of this frenetic activity ends abruptly at 0:54, leaving just the piano and güiro, and then the snare, but the energy level rises as a result of all this subtraction and the piano montuno leads the way into a raw, driving timba groove.

But why does this piano part sound so great? And why, in 1992, did it sound so dramatically different? And why does timba piano playing in general sound so different from salsa and son? The chord progression is one part of it. This particular piano part uses a chord progression (bVII - IV) that Franz Schubert used in his string quartets 170 years ago and which lay largely dormant until the Rolling Stones and other rock bands took it to the bank in the 1960’s. It subsequently became an integral part of English and American pop music. It’s nothing more complex than going backwards around the circle of 5ths - or, in layman’s terms, swimming upstream against the natural flow of harmony until one returns home by circling the globe, as it were. But this type of chord progression, among many others, is more or less "illegal" in traditional Latin music. For example, bVII - IV doesn’t occur once in all of the records of the Buena Vista Social Club, nor in any other traditional charanga or son. Making this and other more adventurous harmonies fair game gave Latin pop music a whole new palette of harmonic colors from which to draw, but it wasn't the chord progressions alone which made La Charanga’s montunos so fresh and exciting. Juan Formell and Rubén Blades had been having their way with “bVII - IV” and other rock & roll chord progressions long before Calzado & González graduated from the ENA. Nor was it the "hook" factor discussed in our Los Van Van and NG La Banda sections. Pupy Pedroso, Peruchín and Miguelito Armas had already begun to make each montuno a unique entity which by itself revealed the identity of the song. Juan Carlos González' quantum leap in the art of piano montuno construction was his phrasing. He fearlessly changed chords in the most unpredictable places and with unerring rhythmic intuition he dismantled the age old rules for fitting montuno patterns against the clave. In doing so he opened up a whole new world of melodic possibilities for himself, which he voiced in tenths to give them a bright timbre that cut through the percussion and perfectly complemented Pedro Pablo’s fat baby bass sound. It should be noted that González was first and foremost an arranger. Viola, not piano, was his first instrument, and some of the montunos he invented were performed by Manuel Arranz. But the musical mind of Juan Carlos González changed Cuban music forever and ignited an explosion in montuno-playing that reached its zenith in the work of Iván “Melón” González, Tony Pérez, Sergio Noroña, Yaniel "El Majá" Matos, Tirso Duarte and Rolando Luna.

The first piano tumbao of "Para el Llanto", from a purely rhythmic standpoint, is very similar to the standard 2-3 piano rhythm that’s been played for 30 years in salsa, and from a harmonic standpoint, as we’ve said, it’s simply "I - bVII - IV - V", a standard Rock progression, which, by that time, was also being used in Latin music. What makes it different here is that halfway through the fourth chord, the first chord starts again, and it does so by playing the same note 7 times in a row, which makes the harmonic progression asymmetrical and the downbeat less obvious. [audio example 18] Using repeated notes in this way later became a key feature of many important timba montunos by Melón, Noroña and others. For example, listen to the montuno Noroña created for the Paulito/Ceruto chart "Y Ahora Qué" from 1997. [audio example 18b]

Meanwhile, back in 1992, we now have what appears to be a 2-3 montuno playing a 2 bar chord progression. Next, we get a double twist on something NG La Banda did three years earlier with La expresiva [audio example 19]. In that song, the beginning of the piano breakdown sounded like the end of a phrase, but turned out to be the beginning, changing the clave from 2-3 to 3-2 in the process. In "Para el Llanto" the beginning of the piano breakdown sounds like the beginning, but turns out to be the end, and because the proportions are doubled, it doesn’t change the clave at all, only perceived chord progression. [audio example 20] When the piano first comes in at 0:54, it sounds for all the world as if the chord progression is G - F- C - D, but when the bass and coro come in we realize that it’s really C - D - G - F! Before leaving this section, listen very carefully to the piano and note that it only plays the harmonically displaced montuno behind the lead vocalist - behind the coro, it plays a more symmetrical pattern so as not to conflict with the three part vocal harmony. This kind of loving detail is possible because the musician's lifestyle in Havana is such that each musician plays in only one band and each band rehearses up to 6 times a week.

For even more dramatic evidence of timba’s dependence on the timba lifestyle, listen once more to this section, this time concentrating on the bassline. Behind the coro Gutiérrez plays C - D# (B) - E - G, completely altering the meaning of the piano harmonies, which remain unchanged from their original entrance! The D# shouldn’t work against against the D chord, and you don’t even want to know what the vocal harmonies are doing at that point - the bass, piano and voices are actually all playing different chord progressions! None of it should work and yet it all works magnificently because the rhythmic placement of each note avoids the clashes inherent in the 3 progressions. After many trips to Cuba to try to understand the creative process behind this incredible music, we’ve come to the conclusion that much of the magic is not "composed" per se, but results from a group of highly talented, intuitive musicians rehearsing long hours and gradually perfecting the combination of their intricate parts as a group effort.

"Para el llanto" kicks into an even higher gear at 1:47 where a textbook-perfect "New York-style" clave change (or a "Type 2 clave change" in the parlance of Understanding Clave and Clave Changes) leads to a mambo and then the next coro, "no me mortifiques más, déjame tranquilo ya, echa pa'llá". The piano montuno here is even better. It's especially easy to hear at 2:37 when the bass drops out.[audio example 21] Listen to the way the two high notes, the "hook" of this particular montuno, jump out at 2:42 just after "echa pa’llá" and just before the horns come in. The arrangement has been constructed (or intuitively developed in rehearsal) so that each musical nuance gets its moment in the spotlight. This contrapuntal wonder cycles several times, building in intensity, and climaxes at the bloque at 3:02 which the rest of the band plays together while the piano montuno rages onward. The next bloque, at 3:56, is even more intense..."¡agua!". [audio example 22] Finally, listen to the way the final coro, "échate pa'llá, déjame tranquilo, échate pa’llá, pa’llá" fits with the conga. For example, at 4:10 "pa’llá" lines up perfectly with the two low open tones of the 3-2 conga tumbao. From the first note to the last, “Para el Llanto” is simply a revelation - a breathtaking musical accomplishment.