The Chicago International Salsa Congress - A Timbero's Perspective

Article and all photos by Bill Tilford -- All Rights Reserved

PRELUDIO As I type this, I can already hear the screams of some of my most hard-line Timbero friends and colleagues that I have committed the supreme blasphemy by writing an extended article here about a Salsa Congress, so please allow me to begin by addressing those dear friends. For quite some time now, I have been wandering about looking for insights into whether there are ways to effectively tackle the biggest challenge facing Timba music in the United States:  we as a community have basically failed to attract the levels of mass paying (that word "paying" is important) audiences that the music truly deserves, and at the very time when it is politically easier than it has ever been for bands to tour the United States from Cuba, the economic realities of the position of Timba music in the marketplace have slowed what could  be a flood of amazing bands touring the country to a relative trickle touring  primarily the East and West coasts.  Even in those places, the audience numbers have frequently failed to live up to initial expectations. What's more, many of the US-based bands that play Timba have either fallen upon hard times, adapted by playing more fusion and/or Salsa and/or survived by touring extensively out of the United States. There are a prosperous few, but they are exceptions that prove the rule. This problem is truly odd because much of the Salsa audience is already halfway home - many of the songs they listen to were written and originally performed in Cuba, and most of the most important roots of Salsa come from Cuban music. Nowadays, they even listen to some Salsa versions of what were originally Timba songs. So, it's obviously not some anti-Cuban thing on their part.  Much of the blame lies within our own community - we have frequently done a poor job with things like advertising, marketing, teaching newcomers and reaching out in a friendly way to new listeners and dancers. We grew too comfortable within our own little circles to think about the future, and now our complacency is coming home to roost. I still believe that we can engage many Salseros and add them to the community of listeners and dancers for our newer music, but we can't do it the way that too many of us have gone about it in the past - by demanding for example that they abandon Salsa entirely and convert to the true musical religion.  Nor will we bring them to the dance by insulting their tastes. We absolutely will never accomplish it by neglecting to send them a proper invitation, which is probably the most frequent and serious problem I have witnessed. So, this series is also an invitation to a friendly dialogue between us and them.  I will also tell you that "us and them" actually has three camps rather than two.  There are a lot of people, and I happen to be one of them, who listen to the best Salsa as well as the best Timba.  As a musician, what is most important for my own enjoyment is the quality of the music, not the marketing label that is applied to it.  There is good and bad music in both genres.   

To the Salseros, welcome. I know that this may not be where you usually hang out, but if you have the patience and interest to stick around, you are in for a great adventure.  In order to help give you an incentive to do just that, I am going to spread this article and the dozens of pictures of the recent Chicago International Salsa Congress out over a period of several weeks. (If you don't see yourself in this installment, check back in the next one.)  In between the installments, please look about the rest of the website. You can find more Salsa in the Chicago sections, but please also take the opportunity to introduce yourself to Timba, our main reason for existing, while you are here.  I will also tell you that even though we love telling people that Timba is different from Salsa, sometimes we all exaggerate the differences to the point that we needlessly frighten people away. The truth is that Timba shares many of the same roots as Salsa - it just added more modern elements as it went along.  We promise you that if you look in here deep enough, you will discover some bands and some songs that will really knock your socks off. Now, I listen to Salsa as well as to Timba myself, so don't feel as if you have to choose.  Good music is good music, period. Most of the things you may read and  hear that attempt  to divide us come from people who are trying to look intelligent at parties or protect some personal interest that they have.  If even a few of you discover a Havana d'Primera, a David Calzado y su Charanga Habanera or an Elio Reve y su Charangon for the very first time while you're here, this effort will have been worthwhile for you, me and all of us.   

The Chicago International Salsa Congress vs. the San Francisco Salsa Rueda Festival This was the twelfth year of the Chicago event, which began as the Chicago Bacardi Salsa Congress in 2002 and evolved over time to its current form. The Salsa Rueda Festival in San Francisco falls on the same dates, and it just celebrated its fifth year. Since the San Francisco event has a much  more concentrated Cuban music focus, it is common for a significant number of Cuban music and dance enthusiasts from all over the country (yes, including from Chicago) to fly out to that event, and the Chicago event has perhaps wisely positioned itself not to act as a direct competitor to San Francisco in terms of content. Nevertheless, the Chicago event, which began on a Thursday night and ended in the wee hours of a Monday morning,  did have dance workshops for Mambo, Guaguancó, Pachanga and beginning Rueda, all of which are Cuban dance forms, and the San Francisco festival also had a DJ room which advertised that it was including Bachata, Reggaeton and Kizomba music, all of which are decidedly not Cuban music styles, in the music mixes.  The fact that Chicago has very large Puerto Rican and Colombian communities and a relatively small Cuban one does tend to stack the musical deck in favor of bands that cater directly to those audiences, but that's hardly a surprise - this is a privately-funded and organized event that needs to tend to its audience's demands. Certainly there is no misleading advertising in the title:  it is Salsa, and it is international. The question of whether there could and/or should be more "Cuban content" and why even that term may mean different things to different people is an interesting  one that we'll address in some depth in a later chapter, but for now we'll observe that even the local bands that we heard at this event included Salsa versions of some Cuban covers (including some Adalberto Alvarez songs) in their books.  Some of the competition and exhibition dancers used various Cuban genres including Charanga and Mambo for their material.  From that perspective, one could say that there was plenty of music of Cuban origin if not directly from there.  

Best Aspects of the Congress:  Taken on its own terms, this was an extremely well-done event. The Salsa on stage was largely dura,  the bands were excellent (Choco Orta  won this man's heart with both her singing, which has real heart, and her percussion playing.  On the final night, Grupo Niche was incendiary). The workshops that we attended were well presented - the Rueda workshop used some Manolito for the music, and the Guaguanco workshop threw down some serious Yambu using Muñequitos de Matanzas. We'll say a lot more about all of that in the installments still to come, but I think the most important thing that this event does is give young people a real incentive to get involved in the music and dance. Providing a showcase for the youngsters from the dance studios and dance teams may very well be the most important reason to give the event high marks.     

COMING NEXT TIME :  In two weeks, we'll have some very extensive photo galleries of some of the competition and demonstration dancing as well as some more shots from workshops and other goodies.  We'll also discuss the Congress in more detail.  Later on in the series, we'll begin discussing what the implications are for Timba and "Cuban Salsa".  You can also see more pictures now from the beginning of the Congress at our CISC Special Edition section: 

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