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Review of First Eight Volumes

Beyond Salsa Piano?

A review of this wonderful series should probably begin by asking the question why "Beyond Salsa Piano"? To understand where something is going you first need to appreciate where it is coming from, and that is as true for this series of works as it is for the music itself.

My life changed a dozen or so years ago when I came across Rebeca Mauleón's "Salsa Guidebook" in the music shop of a friend I was visiting in Bristol. Although I'd been playing piano since I was a kid I'd kind of got tired of straight-ahead jazz and my playing had stagnated somewhat. I'd always had a bit of a bent towards Latin jazz, although like many I didn't really know or understand much about it. Rebeca's book opened up a whole new world to me. This was around the time that a certain kind of Cuban music was getting more attention due to the Buena Vista phenomenon, and there were also salsa classes springing up in bars all over London. I was soon hooked on a journey that led to an obsession with Cuba, it's music, it's culture and its people, and ultimately ended up with my marrying a great Cuban girl.

At the beginning of that journey I practised my montunos for hours every day to the point of getting RSI, and I sought out other musicians who wanted to exchange ideas and material. I well remember our excitement as I was leafing through Rebeca's following book "101 Montunos" when it came out in 1999 with fellow piano player Alex Wilson at the Glamorgan jazz summer school. In the following years I worked on building up my music collection, started playing with some local Latin bands and ultimately began arranging material for my own groups. Through all this I eagerly devoured any relevant material I could find, but in a way it seemed as though somehow the end of a line had been reached. There were rumours of another volume from Rebeca in the pipeline ("102 Montunos"?), but this never materialized, and the few other Latin-related theory books seemed to be simply fresh (or not so fresh) presentations of the same old material.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Through spending extended periods in Cuba I was aware that there was a whole new strand of music developing there which remained relatively unappraised and unanalyzed in the outside world. Cuban timba clearly shared the same roots as the salsa being played in New York and Latin America, but was obviously a different animal altogether, whose development was driven by a whole other set of cultural, economical and political constraints. This wasn't the first time such a split had been seen between Cuba and outside world. In fact, because of the relative isolation due to the embargo against the island it's a phenomenon that has happened several times in recent history. In the first years of the revolution from 1959 the Cuban population was divided into those who left and those who stayed behind on the island, which became increasingly closed off to the influence of the outside world. Presently there had been an ongoing cultural exchange between musicians of the US and Cuba, but from that point the development of Cuban music forked into two distinct paths. Exiled musicians naturally forged relationships with Latin Americans in the barrios of New York or elsewhere, becoming part of a momentum which resulted in the “Latin Explosion” of the 70s and 80s, and which has led to Latin music influencing virtually every major genre outside Cuba.

Meanwhile, back on the island the music underwent an entirely complementary process of development. The official emphasis on study of “serious” music and the closing of cultural as well as geographical borders left musicians hungry for ideas from the outside world. Innovators such as Juan Formell brought in harmonic progressions, rhythms and instrumentation from rock, pop and jazz music, resulting in new genres such as the songo played by Los Van Van and laying the way for the timba revolution of the 1990s.

But this series of books starts long before that by exploring the very roots of Cuban rhythms as they evolved and progressed through changing instrumentations, spawning one sub-genre after another along the way. For those of us who are familiar with the music of the past there is a temptation to skip this and an eagerness to just dive into the later volumes which present the timba material we have been waiting for so long. In my opinion that is a mistake. Kevin’s presentation of the musical forms alongside what is effectively a detailed discography of Cuban musical development soon got me listening to my music collection over again in a new way.

Something for Everyone

The depth of analysis and attention to detail in these volumes is astounding, and when you dig out your old recordings and listen to them while reading along you will be amazed at how much you missed first time round. But there is an even more important imperative beyond that - as I said at the top, before you know where you are going you need to know where you are coming from, and all too often we are too keen to get there without really examining our motives for doing so. An understanding of what went before informs what we do now and in the future, and that is why I agree with the author’s thesis that although the development of Cuban music appears to present a series of discontinuities, these are really just the result of an ongoing process of evolution subjected to the stresses of external events.

Another point to make here is that each of these volumes has something for everyone, regardless of technical skill and experience. Like many who will be reading this, I’m not some legend of Latin music (yet!) - I’m a competent player who is constantly striving to improve his understanding and performance of the music he loves, and these books go a long way to helping in that. But even if you are a star player or just a beginner in this music, there is something new for you here. The author has labelled each book with a guide to level of difficulty, but don’t dare to think that just because a volume says “beginner” or “intermediate” there is nothing for you learn there.

General Presentation

It would have been easy to produce a series of books consisting only of 2-bar tumbao patterns in various keys, but this series goes far beyond that. In any case, given the nature of the tumbaos in timba music, that approach would simply not have been sufficient. Instead, the evolution of piano tumbaos from the earliest forms to the present day is explored in the context of a chronology and discography of the music itself, accompanied by images of disc covers and performers (in colour in the online version). The overall presentation is appealing, and the images really bring it to life and help to evoke the era being discussed. I highly recommend looking at the previews of the books on the author’s site to get a feel of the style.

Of course, musical examples figure largely in the text, written out in both 16th- and 8th- note notation so there is plenty of opportunity for hands-on experimentation, and if you need a guiding hand then recordings of all the exercises in high-quality .mp3 format can be purchased in separate sets for each volume in the series. The recordings have the left and right hands separated in the corresponding stereo channels, and can thus be listened to individually for clarity if desired. Samples of the audio recordings are available on the author’s Web site.

Kevin clearly understands that it is not enough simply to read a book if you want to learn to play music like this, and he puts a lot of effort into emphasizing the importance of listening and practising. There are plenty of study and practice tips to be found here, ideas for playing tumbaos against various rhythmic figures, and suggestions for ways of using technology to slow down, loop and change the pitch of recordings to help us get the most out of our practice.

About the Author

For over ten years Kevin Moore has run the timba[dot]com web site, and it is no exaggeration to say that he is probably the world’s foremost evangelist and scholar of contemporary Cuban dance music. He is a musician (violinist and leader of Salsa Gitana), an avid collector and a diligent musicologist. So, far from being just a fan site, timba[dot]com is a wonderful resource for musicians, dancers and anyone else who is passionate about this music. If you are prepared to dig down beyond the concert listings and reviews you will find a wealth of in-depth material and analysis on the site. There are analyses of musical form, harmony and lyrics, beat-by-beat details of rhythmic patterns, detailed chronologies and discographies, and much more. Kevin has even developed his own theory of “gears” as a way of analyzing and describing the shifts of pace and energy from section to section in the performance of a timba song. This concept was first expounded in Volume 3 of “The Tomas Cruz Conga Method” series which Kevin co-authored, and which is now used as a percussion study text in many schools.

Outlines of the Volumes

So, to the books themselves. Volume 1 explores the roots of the piano tumbao in the changúi, danzón, son and son montuno forms of the early 20th century, detailing typical harmonic progressions and relationships between the patterns and clave. It shows how these figures emerged on stringed instruments such as the tres and subsequently migrated to the piano, and looks at the rhythmic and harmonic interactions between tumbaos played on instruments in different tonal registers, such as piano and bass. From changúi, the book progresses through the styles of rumba, danzon and son, culminating in a detailed exposition of the work of that pivotal figure in Cuban music, Arsenio Rodriguez.

Like all books in the series, this one finishes with a set of really useful appendices, including suggestions for further listening and reading, a glossary of terms including many specific to Cuban music, and some harmony charts detailing common progressions. This last feature is something which is developed considerably in future volumes.

Volume 2 picks up where we left off in the 1940s, exploring the role of the piano in the early charanga orchestras and the big bands that followed them, and carrying on with the famous orchestras which emerged in the 50s, such as Aragón, Fajardo, Revé and others. There is an interesting interlude on the work of arranging piano tumbaos within the texture of these instrumentations. Then we have a chapter on the conjunto format groups, before wrapping up with a section on the clave and its alignment with other instrumental patterns, including the piano tumbaos we’ve come across up to now.

If you’ve got this far in the series you’re probably already hooked, and the next two volumes carry on providing the missing links in the evolutionary chain that leads to the Cuban dance music of the last decade. Volume 3 deals with the dynamic two decades following the revolution – a period which gave birth to orchestras such as Van Van, and the reincarnation of Ritmo Oriental – bands whose far-reaching influence remains with us up to the present day. This was a period which saw many foreign influences sneaked into the country by musicians hungry for change and keen to incorporate elements of rock, pop, jazz, soul and more. This substantial volume does a good job of documenting how these eclectic styles became incorporated into mainstream Cuban music, and looks at newly emerging instrumentation, jazzbands such as Irakere, and the incorporation of new instruments such as synthesizer and trap drumset into ensembles. In this period we also begin to see the emergence of innovations such as contrary motion in the piano tumbao. The book also deals with the incorporation of elements from Afro-Cuban folkloric music, which after a hiatus during the early years of the revolution was beginning to regain some acceptability, and there is a useful appendix detailing some folkloric forms. The changing role of the piano through all this is well-documented, accompanied by articles on arranging and new musical forms. Concerning the form of timba, Kevin’s theory of “gears” makes its first appearance in this volume of the series, priming the reader for a much more detailed treatment later on in Volume 5. There is also a fascinating section of the role of piano tumbaos in Latin jazz, and how this relates to their use in Cuban dance music.

Volume 4 explores the decade leading up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall – a political event which had cultural repercussions around the world, not least in Cuba where a hitherto dependency on Soviet aid would soon be replaced by a struggle to survive without it. The book looks at the increasingly flexible instrumentation of the modern conjuntos and charangas which became a breeding ground for the music to come a decade later. Already there were elements of timba style emerging in the piano tumbaos of this period, arising from the desire of pianists to escape from the constant repackaging of the same old ideas. This volume introduces the idea of ‘learning a series of interchangeable variations on the same tumbao in order to develop the skill of “controlled improvisation”’ – a device which is essential to the playing of timba piano, and something which a few salsa piano players could learn a trick or two from.

The Timba Revolution

Without any doubt, Volume 5 is the book which many of us have been waiting for - a book which I consider to be the first work in ten years to add significantly to the body of study literature on Latin piano technique. This volume contains a wealth of material which is simply not available in any form anywhere else. The key to this is the author’s diligent work in recording and transcribing the piano patterns of all the leading timba pianists of the last 20 years. And persuading them to let him record the data stream from MIDI output of their keyboards as they played was a stroke of genius. The data thus obtained can be displayed and analyzed in minute detail, and gives up many secrets which would otherwise not be available. Even the most talented ears can have difficulty in hearing exact voicings and articulations in an audio recording, and although a good video can help with this it’s still difficult to see exactly what is being played in a fast tumbao. But every nuance of the performance is there to be explored in the MIDI data. The author has been enormously privileged to get access to this material, and we in turn are privileged that he has chosen to transcribe and share it with us through this remarkable series of books.

As Kevin says, Volume 5 is truly the behemoth of the series, with a cornucopia of wonderful things waiting to be discovered in its 126 expansive pages. It begins with a section explaining exactly what timba music is, and outlining its form, harmonies, dance conventions and more. Then we are treated to a wonderfully illuminating history and listening tour of the music as it developed through the 1990s in Cuba. If like me you already have all the albums, you’ll love this, as listening to them again while you read the text is like taking a walk down a familiar old street with a well-informed guide who points out all the historical and architectural features you had never noticed before.

The next chapter presents us with Ten Piano Innovations of the Timba Era, including increased lengths of tumbaos, extra notes in the left hand and grace note rolls. If you were to do nothing more than read this chapter and work on incorporating these ideas into your own tumbaos you could transform your playing, but this book takes you much further than that. Chapter 4 ‘consists of 32 “estudios” – tumbaos created to master the various new approaches described in the previous chapter.’ There is plenty of woodshedding material here to keep even a competent player occupied for a few months or more. If you purchase the audio recordings that complement this volume there is a set of tracks featuring bass and rhythm allowing you to practice these studies at a range of speeds. I recommend, as Kevin suggests, using a program such as the excellent Transcribe from Seventh String Software to allow you to vary the speed and pitch of these tracks further, so you can practice them in other keys than the one written.

By this point we are only just over halfway through this amazing book, and if you thought your interest might be about to flag – think again. The next chapter features a full exposition of Kevin’s theory of “gears” – an ingenious way of describing and delineating the shifts of pace and energy which occur in a typical live timba performance. Although it is essential for live players to understand how these gears work, this chapter will be of special interest to those who are looking to write and arrange timba music for their own bands as well.

Finally, apart from the usual appendices and glossary, this volume contains a mammoth appendix on timba harmony, featuring Roman numeral harmonic charts for every theme of every song by every major timba band through the 1990s – a crazy compilation of over 500 themes! This should be enough to keep most of us occupied for a while to come.

Beyond Volume 5

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the woodshed, Kevin has released the first three volumes of the series dedicated to the work of individual timba pianists – in this case the dazzlingly talented Iván “Melón” Lewis who formerly played with the Issac Delgado group. Melón was one of the first exponents of the “controlled improvisation” approach to tumbao playing first described in an earlier book, and that aspect of his playing features heavily in these next volumes. Like some of his contemporaries, Melón studied classical and jazz piano under the Cuban conservatory system and the influence of this on both his technique and his style is evident. Some of his left-hand tumbao patterns bear a startling resemblance to baroque keyboard figures, albeit played with timba accents driven by the speaking tones of the right-hand part.

After a short biographical tour of Melón’s work in the first chapter of Volume 6, the book goes on to explain the relevance of the “gears” concept from the pianist’s perspective. Then in following chapters come note-for-note transcriptions of Melón’s tumbaos as played in two classic Issac Delgado tracks – “No me mires a los ojos” and “La vida sin esperanza”. The examples given are contrasted against orthodox salsa tumbaos, and bearing in mind the fact that timba tumbaos are often longer than 2-bar repeating figures, there are some transcribed passages of up to 16 bars or so. The book finishes with a chapter on the mindset of the timba pianist, and why the “controlled improvisation” approach is the one to aim for.

Volume 7 carries on in the same vein, with detailed expositions and analyses of two more tracks – “Por qué paró” and “Luz viajera”, with a brief interlude on the role of gear changes for dancers of timba. Then Volume 8 gives us three more tracks: “Deja que Roberto te toque”, “Brindando co el alma” and “La chica del sol”, the last being an example of a crossover style between salsa and timba.

In these volumes featuring individual artists the author’s approach of recording and analyzing the MIDI stream from the pianist’s keyboard really shines through. Audio transcription is an excellent exercise in itself for ear training, but you could spend months transcribing recordings and not get anywhere close to the accuracy and details of what is presented here, and that alone makes this series of books astonishingly unique and invaluable.

Beyond Timba Piano

It would be easy to think that a series like this would only be relevant to piano players but that is certainly not the case. These books have much of interest for other rhythm section players, and indeed for would-be timba arrangers and anyone else who wants to understand what makes this music tick. Having said that, Kevin is already talking about a companion series entitled Beyond Salsa Percussion, the first volumes of which due to come out later in 2010. I’m sure we’ll all await this eagerly, along with the forthcoming volumes of Beyond Salsa Piano featuring ever more of the great pianists of the timba era.

There is a history of musical innovations being forged on the island of Cuba before finally breaking out into the wider world and making their mark on music at large. Books like those by Rebeca Mauleón have enabled more of us to participate in that process. As Kevin himself says, those works are “by far the most influential Latin piano books ever written”, but the present series is surely set to become a strong contender for that crown. I have no doubt that Rebeca’s books have been largely responsible for the injection of Latin elements into many mainstream musical forms by those musicians who have been captivated and enthused through reading them. Now, ten years after Rebeca’s last book, Kevin Moore has produced a unique and outstanding set of works which make the last twenty years of Cuban music accessible to anyone who cares to learn to play it. It remains to be seen whether the rest of the world is now ready for an injection of Cuban timba.

Posted by: Keith Johnson on Wednesday, 10 March 2010, 10:49 AM