6) Para el Llanto

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Our Love Fever review has a lengthy discussion of this track. Here we’ll just describe the clave structure. As usual, it starts in 1^st gear in 2:3. Towards the end of the "chorale" (see main review), at 0:48, the campana switches to 2^nd gear. After a series of bloques we wind up in 3^rd gear at 1:05, still in 2:3. The first clave change comes when the mambo at 1:47 starts 2 beats early, on the 3 side, and puts us in 3:2 via a New York style change.

The ingenious coros on this track make this a good place to discuss the relationship between coros and clave, which is traditionally a very strong one. In a huge amount of early salsa and son, many if not most of the accents of the coros will fall right on the clave. In Timba, where such a high value is placed on originality and hooks in each coro, the relationship is much more subtle, but it’s still there. Let’s take a look at the first two coros of "Para el Llanto". The first is in 2:3 and the second is in 3:2, but notice how ingeniously they’re constructed such that "para tanto" falls squarely on the 2 side. In coro 2, the phrase "y que te quedas" is repeated twice to push these syllabes over so that the natural rhythm of the language still coincides with the clave.

00000000000000|0000
00x0|0000|x0x0|x000
0x0x|0x0x|xxxx|xxxx (underlined notes coincide with the clave)

coro 2 (3:2): (in this case "ti" is the 2^nd note of the 3 side, "tran" is the 2^nd note of the next 3 side, "que" and "que" are both notes of the 2 side, "te" is the 3^rd note of the 3 side, "qui" is the 2^nd note of the 2 side, "llan" and "es" are the 2^nd and 3^rd notes of the 3 side and "ra" and "tan" are both notes of the 2 side.