Timba (music style)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timba is a Cuban style of music . Due to its historical development, it is a variant, not a subgroup, of salsa music .

prehistory

In post-revolutionary Cuba it was an unwritten law among Cuban musicians to avoid the term “salsa” for a long time. The word was simply ignored by the committee of the state record company EGREM . From a Cuban point of view, salsa was a neo-colonialist tool of the US-dominated music industry, which tried to occupy the traditional Cuban rhythms in this way . Salsa was Cuban music played by non-Cubans. Since this music had always been played in Cuba, there was no need for a new name. This changed in the early 1990s with the promotion of tourism and the new freedom of travel for Cuban musicians, who from 1993 were also allowed to be under contract with foreign music companies. From 1990 one of the state channels of the Cuban television broadcast the program Mi Salsa . New anthologies with titles like ¿Son o Salsa? (1991) or Salsa Cubana (1995). The latter was also the title of a music magazine in Cuba that appeared in the second half of the 1990s. In terms of content, it did not give up on the claim that salsa was exclusively Cuban music, but indicated that the Cuban leadership was rethinking: After three decades of polemics against salsa, the state authorities were now trying to use the term for their own purposes to establish international awareness. The term “salsa” first appeared on a music album with the music group NG La Banda : The song Necesita una amiga on the CD En la Calle (1988) was signed as “balada-salsa”. NG LA Banda's next production consisted of rearranged Cuban songs, titled Salseando (1990). In 1991 the singer Issac Delgado NG left La Banda and started a solo career with the nickname "El Chévere de la Salsa". Smaller music groups also began to use the term (such as Septeto Raisón with Mi salsa cubana in 1995 ).

origin

According to the dictionary, Timba means "gambling den, card game". A “timbero” was accordingly a “card player”. There is also a sweet dish in Cuba, a combination of bread and guava called “pan con timba”. A district of Havana is also called "Timba". Cesar "Pupi" Pedroso, the former Los Van Van pianist , referred to this meaning when he titled his debut album De la Timba a Pogolotti (1999). Pogolotti and Timba are both neighborhoods with a high percentage of Afro-Cubans.

The term "Timba" is therefore firmly rooted in the Cuban context and has also circulated in the musical field for a long time. "Timba" has been used as a synonym for rumba in Cuba for decades . Issac Delgado stated that when he was at university in the 1970s, young Iraqi musicians like Chucho Valdés or Arturo Sandoval held secret jazz sessions that were then called "tocar timba" or "timbear". The game of the Rumberos, if they had made music in the backyards, would have been called "playing timba". As a good rumba singer he himself would have been called “timbero”. As a result, it is a term that comes from the streets of Cuba. Van Vans singer Mario Rivera, however, opposes the fact that the term Timba was also used in the state conservatories for years in the 1990s. The Cuban authors Neris González Bello and Liliana Casanella Cué even consider the establishment of the conservatories to be one of the basic requirements for the later emergence of the Timba.

development

From the 1990s the term “Timba” appeared increasingly in the Cuban “música bailable” ( Spanish: dance music) at the same time as the term salsa. The initiator is the flautist José Luis Cortés with his group NG La Banda. It is most associated with "Timba", although the group initially (1990, 1993) also used the term "Salsa" in their albums. In retrospect, her album En la calle , released in 1989, is also considered the first Timba album, although the expression does not appear directly.

From the mid-1990s, the so-called "Timba explosion" set in. The trigger was the group Charanga Habanera by David Caldzado with their 1996 album Me sube la fiebre . The band leader of Cuba's legendary Los Van Van group , Juan Formell , also started calling his music “Timba” in 1997. In particular, the albums Esto te pone la cabeza mala (1997) and Llegó Van Van (1999) achieved an unprecedented international success. The state record company EGREM increasingly began to promote the "Timba" as a trademark of Cuban music. A large number of new groups and productions emerged. Some well-known groups and musicians are: Pupy y Los que Son, Son (Cesar Pupy Pedroso, ex-pianist of Los Van Van), Manolín, El Médico de la Salsa , Pachito Alonso y sus kini kini , Azúcar Negra , Bamboleo , Charanga Forever , Tirso Duarte , Giraldo Piloto (ex-percussionist of NG La Banda) and his group Klimax , Manolito y su Trabuco and Paulito FG .

Spurred on by the success of Buena Vista Social Club in 1996, the Grammy Awards in 1998 and the documentary of the same name by Wim Wenders in 1999, there was an increased demand for Cuban music around the world. Cuban musicians were not averse to leaving Cuba and settling abroad. Due to the large number of Cuban emigrants, Miami developed into the largest Timba stronghold outside of Cuba. Well-known musicians like Manolín, El Médico de la Salsa , Chaka and his group El Tumbao , the Cuban Timba All Stars and, last but not least, Jorge Gomez with Tiempo Libre can be found there .

style

Timba, like salsa, is formally based mostly on the son montuno , in which a first, melodic part (mostly stanzas ("estribillo") and a refrain ) of the montuno , a part that is perceived as an increase and determined by improvisation and the repetition of shorter sections, is followed. But while salsa is basically based on the son- clave and the bass usually plays on the 2+ and 4, Timba is open to other "time lines". The rule should be a 3-2 rumba clave to which the bass (“cantando”) or funk-influenced figures play.

The typical instrumentation for a timba group consists of singers, piano or keyboard, bass, drums and timbales, congas and a brass section. Contrary to the tenor of this article, which emphasizes what salsa and timba have in common and the use of the terms as a marketing instrument, certain “special traditions” have developed in Cuba in the use of these instruments, which in different combinations contribute to a specific timba style.

The bass is usually an electric bass, but its role can also be taken over or doubled by a keyboard. Its free role compared to salsa has already been mentioned.

The keyboard replacing bass, piano or background strings is part of the Van Van legacy. Hugo Morejón, one of the band's trombonists, began playing it regularly when the trombone set was on break. Contramontunos to the montunos of the regular pianist César “Pupy” Pedroso also belong to his roles. Together with Pedroso's playing, which is variously described as contrapuntal, this leads to downright hyperactive chord breaks, often in high registers. Another typical feature of Timba-Montunos is that they can be specially developed into one piece, i.e. they do not necessarily come from a traditional fund of play figures.

The expansion of the sound arsenal by e-drums can also be traced back to an underemployed member of the Van Van trombone set and his drum pad; more typical, however, is that such pads are also played by the drummer. Timbales are also usually part of the drum set and are therefore played while seated; Since Changuito , the ideal drummer in Cuba has been using congas, drums, cymbals, pads and timbales with all combinations of sticks and bare hands and also changes within a piece.

Before hip-hop and reggaeton spread in Cuba, the singers of the Timba bands also rapped.

The wind section is often a trombone trio, but can also approach salsa with trumpets and saxophones or continue the Cuban charanga tradition with strings and flute .

meaning

The name Timba was initially a pure marketing tool . Leading Cuban musicians such as Issac Delgado, Lazaro Valdés, Juan Formell, and many others have repeatedly confirmed this in interviews. The term “Salsa cubana” was rejected by most Cuban musicians as a “fashion label”, but it seemed to them to be the only possible way to assert themselves on the international music market. Other terms such as "hipersalsa", "heavy salsa" or "salsa dura" were also tried, but quickly discarded. But with “Timba” a name of its own related to Cuba was finally found. At the same time it allowed a distinction to "salsa erótica" and "salsa romántica" from the USA and Puerto Rico. In the case of Los Van Van, for example, the adoption of the term was all too obvious, since the group had existed for more than 30 years without ever being associated with Timba. Instead, they marketed their music under their own genre called Songo .

But the more the term was perceived as something of its own, the stronger its identification effect unfolded. The NG La Banda title En la calle ( Spanish: "On the street") was now the program. The groups began to develop concepts for aligning their music with "the common people on the street". The texts got different content and from then on dealt with the joys, worries and needs of people. The musicians sought close contact, especially with the Cuban dancers in front of the stage. Your own cheers should not only act as a trademark, but also strengthen the bond with the audience (like the well-known ataca chicho! By NG La Banda or the Ahí, na 'ma'! By Los Van Van). The timba should spring from Cuban life, the neighborhood of the barrios and the way people dance and party in the streets. In particular, the group La Charanga Habanera stood out here by trying to choreograph modern hip-hop groups and appropriate styled outfits for their performances .

Such a conscious emphasis on the special proximity to the street was always accompanied by an effort to be credible. The well-known Timba groups consist almost exclusively of studied musicians from the conservatory , who are normal, especially with the success abroad and the resurgent music tourism in Cuba (admission to the corresponding music clubs was paid in US dollars until 2004) Life in the Havana neighborhoods are largely enraptured. In addition, the music of the conservatories in Cuba had less of the reputation of being rooted in the streets than of being directed by the state control bodies.

Many Cuban musicians emphasize that Timba is not fundamentally new music, but rather a further development of the Cuban Son , music that has always been played in Cuba. This, too, remains highly doubtful, although some timba elements can already be found in the early music of the Irakere group from the 1970s (such as the incorporation of jazz improvisations into traditional Cuban rhythms or the use of the batá drums).

Against this background, Timba music presents itself as a difficult network, which is guided in its presentation and interpretation by various interests and perspectives: 1) market policy and commercialization, 2) identification and shifting the focus away from state institutions and towards the street and not lastly 3) of ideological theories of a musical continuity in Cuba across all times (see below Giraldo Piloto).

At the present time it is not assumed that timba music is a sub-category of salsa , let alone a genre of its own , but rather an approach of Cuban musicians to salsa. This becomes all the more understandable when you consider that Cuban musicians were excluded from musical exchange with other countries for decades and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, suddenly faced a globalized market. In this sense, there are astonishingly many parallels between the timba and the origins of salsa in New York in the 1970s, such as its origins in the barrio , the urban character of the music, the greater emphasis on the texts, their shift in meaning, the formation of identification, u. Ä. m.

Quotes

  • “At the end of the 80s people noticed that we couldn't go any further with the term 'salsa'. I was one of the first to understand that 'Salsa' is just a label like 'Pepsi Cola', which is just as much a soft drink as 'Coca Cola'; it is a simple word that people in Europe, America and all parts of the world understood to express a kind of music that is made in the Caribbean, in Latin America, music that is danced, 'música tropical'. […] Musical genres, on the other hand, are the Son, the Guaracha, the Cha Cha Chá, they are rhythms that originated in Cuba, but it is important that there is a common umbrella, a roof, like the simple word 'Salsa '. It was lucky for the Cubans that the people from Puerto Rico, from New York, Venezuela and Colombia, stuck to playing Cuban music for three or four decades, our music in the 70s, 80s and also in the 90s to play, even if under a different name, the name of 'salsa', but it was Cuban music. […] That's lucky because the sound stayed in people's ears. ”(Issac Delgado in an interview in 2001)
  • “In today's Cuba we play the music differently and nobody knows what to call it. People dance differently and there is no name for it so we call it Timba. There used to be a time when we had to accept the term 'salsa' because of the international situation. At the time we were on the defensive, but now we are on the offensive and we can say, 'No, that's not what we're doing. We're somewhere between traditional Son and Salsa. '”(Juan Formell 1997 at a press conference on his new album Te pone la cabeza mala )
  • “The timba is a genre that the Cuban dancer has been asking for, the result of a development that began over a hundred years ago with the danzón and is now called the timba, but has gone through different styles and different paths over the years, and also different ways of looking at music, ways of dancing, feeling and - as we say in Cuba - 'guarachen' ( Spanish: 'enjoy, celebrate'). ”(Giraldo Piloto, former percussionist of NG La Banda and now music director from his own group Klimax , in an interview in 2001)

literature

  • Torsten Eßer, Patrick Frölicher: Everything in my existence is music ... - Cuban music from rumba to techno. Vervuert, Frankfurt 2004

Web links