El Reloj de Pastora

There are times when, as a musician, you can feel the potential in a song. It's a feeling of great promise as yet untapped, where every ounce of effort poured in will be rewarded in kind, now matter how much your own abilities grow. Such pieces are rare, gems to be treasured, nurtured even, and this classic composed by Arsenio Rodríguez is one. The example I selected for us to learn from is Sierra Maestra's fine interpretation; first for Conjunto Laloma, and lately for 4 de Diciembre.

'El Reloj de Pastora' is proving to be an inspired addition to our playlist. Its unusual key and lulling hypnotic quality of its harmonic progression; moving from B flat minor to A flat major, then transiting through F major on the return to the root, creates an interesting harmonic space for soloing - something the Decemberists have very much enjoyed. The challenge has been, and continues to be, the song's revealing simplicity and how we adapt it best to our instrumentation.

The lyrical theme is based on iteration and misdirection, and as such places heavy demand on a singer's ability to interpret and phrase. The high tessitura of the original key is a chance to develop the upper section of my vocal range, and thankfully 'El Reloj de Pastora' can accept a singing style slightly more laced with overt classical technique than most salsa numbers. The thematic subtexts; the metaphorical meanings that inform the phrasing, are taking a little more time to understand, because it's not literally about "The Shepherdess' Clock" - I read it as being about a something-someone's time.

As a personal journey, 'El Reloj de Pastora' is opening the way to a better understanding of the son and the son montuno. Yes, 4 de Diciembre are charanga-salsa in lineup, and I wanted to preserve that son montuno lilt despite the move to salsa instrumentation, but with a contemporary edge. Strangely enough, it was a stubborn desire both to play the slow rhythm on the güiro and to dance contratiempo while singing that provided a flavour of authenticity.

Nothing worth learning comes cheaply.

I found that the upper body güiro rhythm (one cycle per bar) and the lower body contratiempo rhythm (one cycle per two bars), provided the independent reference points necessary for rhythmic triangulation to solidify the vocal phrasing in the son montuno style. Managing the attacks of the vocals (early), güiro (middle) and dance (late) is awkward for now, but getting less so every day.

At least there's a clear course of development for this singing-güiroing-dancing escapade: moving to son montuno and then chachachá footwork.

©Copyright 2004 World Circuit. All Rights Acknowledged.

Manuel Güajiro Mirabal's version hasn't yet found its way into my lap, but it will once we've got a stronger handle on the groove - I've got a feeling that the trumpet ideas could well propel our playing of the song to new heights. After we've built up the basics that is. Until then, it'll have to twiddle its thumbs impatiently on my wishlist.

Santa... ¿porfi?

looyenyeo

6th-9th November 2009 Salsa Workshops @Red Hat Salsa, Reading (Afterword)

A week has passed and with things having settled down a bit, I can make a more detached assessment of the workshops. Although I'd prepared feedback forms for use after each session, it transpired that there wasn't a chance to deploy them. Instead I've had to rely on anecdotal responses collected from Red Hat and corroborate them with my own observations.

Taking the positive points first, as every educative critique should:

• Most attendees said that they learnt a lot, from a really different, interesting and refreshing perspective.
• They felt it was good to hear from someone of my background and experience.
  
• Even self-confessed non-instructor dancers learned more than they thought they were going to.
• A number would attend my workshops again.
  

Great! On the downside... :

1. There were a few who felt it was a little biased towards my way of teaching and therefore not sufficiently relevant to themselves.
2. Many felt the Saturday was too long.
3. A couple said there was not enough dancing.
   
   

Thoughts on Point 1
It's clear from the title, schedules and course blurb that the 'Year In A Day' is exactly what it says on the tin - progressive over one year and skills-based.

But I surmise that the comment comes from a different place: from those who conduct mainly stand-alone combination-based sessions. I'd sensed that a few couldn't see the relevance in possessing a Hierarchy of Development plan which extended beyond a discrete one hour lesson.

I would have to disagree on the basis that such lessons would still be reliant upon returning students in the short-to-mid term, and that therefore a Hierarchy could be applied to the benefit of the individual at remedial level. Such a treatment would add value to the learning experience, augmenting it above commodity level and convert returners into the mid-to-long term. However there would be an increased effort cost that some instructors might be unwilling to pay.

Thoughts on Point 2
In terms of duration, the Saturday was advertised as beginning at 10:00hrs and ending at 18:45hrs; it actually ran from 10.30hrs until 19:00hrs.

I suspect that this comment was more in response to the sustained cognitive load generated by the session; "long" is an expression used commonly by students to describe learning saturation. The onset of saturation could have been delayed if the stream of concepts had been broken up with assimilation practices, but that was not an option available.

I have, however, already taken this under advisement and will make much firmer recommendations regarding session content in future.

Thoughts on Point 3
Again, this I would interpret as being an alternate expression to Point 2 - the desire for more assimilation time at the expense of content. It's a piece of feedback that I'd anticipated, and one that I wholeheartedly agree with.

In Conclusion
The dryness of the feedback shouldn't be allowed to overshadow what a pleasurable experience it was; to meet so many engaging instructors who take their own personal development, to the benefit of their students, so seriously - Ali, Penny, Sharon, Chunky, and Marco to name but a few. It's been invaluable to keep apace of the challenges they that face in an increasingly competitive arena.

Also reassuring, to me personally, was the affirmation that there is indeed an audience for an alternative skills-based approach; and that I had all the facilities at my disposal which allowed for effective delivery of content, by way of literature, music and instruments. Special mention must be made of the LP compact congas which really came into their own that weekend.

"Some people have been really raving over how great they were", said Sharon.

That's good to know.

Loo Yeo

6th-9th November 2009 Salsa Workshops @Red Hat Salsa, Reading (Part 2)

Mercifully, Sharon had scheduled a mid-day start and I spent a relaxed Sunday morning preparing the musical examples, making notes of time codes, and refining teaching points for the first session: 'The Route to Improvisation'.

This workshop on improvisatory dancing required the most attention, not due to a lack of familiarity with the material, but because I wasn't as fluent with the structure as I would have liked - the Hierarchy of Development of a stand-alone session is chalk and cheese to a long-term progression. Also, I was concerned with the management of expectation; where the only exposure that the majority of dancers have to improvisatory dancing is through the routine of shines.

Bar Risa on Friar Street was only six minutes' walk from the Mercure St.George, and I stepped through the tradesmen's entrance well ahead of time.

There were just eight takers for this session, but reassuringly they were all dance instructors from yesterday. It told me that the material from 'A Year In A Day' had resonated with two-thirds of the teachers present there; strongly enough for them to want to know more. Fantastic! I quickly adjusted the delivery to suit educators, cut out the redundant material, and obtained their permission to take the session into greater depth.

The couple of hours passed as an eye-blink and it proved an unqualified success: there had been plenty of discussion, practice, and sharing of little-known hard-won material. But it must be said that this was could not have been possible without the tremendous amount of hard work invested the day before.

Two non-teachers, an interested musician and journeyman dancer, joined us for the final workshop: 'Dancing Beyond The Count'. This was potentially going to be difficult, what with 80% of the class already being so far ahead in terms of development and groundwork information. I discreetly sought Sharon's advice, as the promoter, as to whether she wanted me to deliver focused on the incoming duo. We decided to continue targeting educators as the primary audience and that I would address the newcomers at remedial level and during the breaks.

Once again, we proceeded well beyond the original schedule and I tied it back in the content of the workshops before, culminating in the dancing of the son montuno to Sierra Maestra's cover of Arsenio Rodríguez's Dundunbanza. I'm fairly certain that this was the first time the son montuno had ever been danced in Reading.

And then my weekender was all over.

I book-ended my trip by attending Red Hat Salsa's Sunday evening session at Jongleur's upstairs of Bar Risa. It was a nice way to unwind, meet more of the dancers and say my goodbyes.

Well, now it's time to pack up. There's a train to catch.

Loo Yeo

6th-9th November 2009 Salsa Workshops @Red Hat Salsa, Reading (Part 1)

It's Monday. The salsa weekend is hours passed and I'm in my hotel room packing for the return trip to Sheffield. With a belly-full of breakfast, there's no better time than now to get a first-impression assessment of the workshop sessions.

My introductory glimpse into Reading's salsa scene began with dinner at Sharon and Ed's on Friday night. It was the ideal way to make our personal acquaintances, talking about how Red Hat Salsa came to be; the regional salsa scene; and for me to understand why they left the beaten track in engaging me to run these far-from-typical sessions. Sharon's genuine appetite for knowledge is vividly striking; something reinforced, unsolicited, over the next days by teachers who've had occasion to work with her.

For dessert, we hopped into the car for a trip to Bracknell.

It was their monthly shindig at the Hilton Hotel where I was at various times during the evening an irrepressible beginner in Sharon's lesson; tripping the fancy stuff with the local salseros; trading wit with the two other teachers that evening, Penny and Chunky; taking in the happenings on the floor; and listening to the kinds of tracks coming over the PA. It was a precious chance to assess the Latin dance scene, at ground level, ahead of time

Saturday dawned beautifully, but its promise was marred by a tardy taxi which landed me thirty minutes behind and starting on the back foot. The wintry community room was filled with two dozen dancers; half of whom were instructors, some having flatteringly travelled from near three hours away. It was never going to be easy - the extensive content and the compressed time-frame of delivery made sure of that. But having to make up more than thirty minutes, AND re-pitch the specification from a secondary to a primary target audience of teachers on-the-fly without losing the non-teachers... okay, this was going to be a robust test of preparation and experience.

The detailed nature of the workshop specifications were the biggest safety net there could ever have been. I kept to the schedules as much as I could because of the coherence already built into them, omitting or skimming over the less significant; and in so doing increased their value as post-session reference documents. Sadly a portion of the time allotted to the practical exercises, the most valuable aspect of any workshop, was sacrificed in lieu of content coverage. The day had a feel more akin to a seminar than a workshop and I've braced myself mentally for that as feedback. To avoid the delivery becoming dry, I made use of plenty of musical examples, including an impromptu rendition of 'El Carretero' as a son element.

The Saving Grace came in the latter part of the day as dancers and teachers warmed up to exchange their experiences in free-flowing discussion. That, arguably, is THE greatest benefit of any well-facilitated session. It told me that despite the less-than-ideal combination of factors, a true workshop-style learning environment had been established. I adjusted the content and presentation at every moment of the day, taking on the feedback articulated or expressed through body language, and making sure to solicit the opinions of the silent during the breaks. The vast majority was positive and helpfully constructive.

Nine-hours of high-intensity delivery left me depleted, and I dropped off my things at the hotel with relief before venturing out to the Oracle, Reading's rather snazzy shopping district, in search of food.

I'd spotted a 'Yo Sushi' bar on the way through, and decided to salve my spirit with some Japanese food. I never eat alone at these places because the hypnotic conveyor-belt of morsels seems to open the gateway to conversation. With Dave the visiting American, we chatted about a Brazillian restaurant we both frequented in Singapore; with the Nepalese sushi chef it was knives, especially the 'kukri' - the knife of the Gurkhas; and the English and Nepalese waiting staff, about the dishes they favoured at the establishment.

Retreating sated to the stillness of my room, I began rallying for the challenges of the Sunday ahead.

(On to Part 2)

Loo Yeo

A Weekender At Red Hat Salsa

"That's a whole weekender" remarked Christophe.

I hadn't thought of it that way. It was that dwelling period that we have over coffees just after lunch - one of the little luxuries we to afford ourselves as we catch up. The inimitable man from Biarritz had just asked me how much teaching I was to do in Reading next weekend. Christophe knew my nose had been kept firmly to the keyboard; organising material for the workshops, and having to put plenty of salsa-related items, like the updating of this blog, on hold.

It happened a while ago when Sharon, who runs the successful Red Hat Salsa in the Reading/Bracknell area, contacted me by email after happening across the salsa-merengue.co.uk website in a bid for more words on salsa's history. We kept the jungle drums beating while I was in the Far East, and together finally arrived at a date, times, and topics for things she wanted me to cover for Red Hat.

Although I'd already sent outlines to her whilst in Penang, I decided to make a rod for my own back and go further by preparing indicative schedules, just as I'd done for Tony Piper at 12th Night.

I regard this as simply 'best practice'.

• A well prepared schedule questions the best order of priority for the learning points, identifies aspects that might otherwise be overlooked, and forces the design of flexibility into its structure.
  
  
• A primary factor affecting the performance of a guest instructor is an understanding of local learning culture. Treated as product specification document, the process has given us both (with me being the provider and Red Hat Salsa the client) a chance to prepare something suited to the purpose.
  
  
• It informs parties of what to expect, that way only those genuinely interested in the topics will attend. Sometimes this can be a source of tension for promoters who want as strong an attendance as possible, but thankfully most acknowledge that a successful workshop is of better long-term value than a well-attended disappointing one.
  
  
• Detailed documents are a source of strong marketing support to the promoter, and having been on the receiving end more than just a couple of times, I make sure I do my utmost to help.
  
  
• A schedule also provides an educator (i.e. me) with a performance benchmark against which feedback can be used to identify areas of success and improvement.
  

I also took it as an opportunity to do some long-overdue house-keeping of my learning materials.

A question which posed some internal conflict was, 'should I restrict circulation of the documents or not?'. All know-how is hard-worn, and certainly in the case of Verdant, the more important the information, the more qualification is required of the potential recipient.

But salsa is different.

For better or worse, I don't instruct in the same arena as most social salsa teachers so there is no need to indulge in competitive defensive practices. But there is something more fundamental at heart - when I first started teaching, I made a personal promise not to hold back; this was after experiences, with myself as student, of teachers who did. When I emailed the files to Sharon, I made no mention of any restrictions in distribution - they've since passed through her mailing lists.

So here it is, the workshops for Red Hat Salsa next weekend:

1. Saturday Morning: A Year In A Day, Part 1 - The Efficient Mover
2. Saturday Afternoon: A Year In A Day, Part 2 - Power and Culture
3. Sunday Noon: Hear It, Imagine It, Dance It - The Route to Improvisatory Dancing
4. Sunday Afternoon: Dancing Beyond The Count

That's a whole weekender alright!

Loo Yen Yeo

Latin Percussion's Compact Congas

I've got a not-very-salsa-street-cred confession to make...

I've been lusting after a set of LP compact congas for a while; since they first appeared and won the 2003 Musikmesse International Press Award (MIPA) as a matter of fact. And six years is an awfully long time to wait, but finally the time was right to let a set into my front room.

The main driver is the sexteto format of 4 de Diciembre. I've had, with the agreement of Ana, Catie, Jan and Jeremy, to suspend Conjunto Laloma practices until the new year; giving over the time slots to 4de12 instead. This is to make sure we can be ready for our Middlesborough concert with Chris and Sue's SalsaYarm. In return, I gave my assurance that our ground-up approach to musicianship and arrangements embedded in Laloma's practices would persist into 4de12 sexteto.

The compact congas and bongo have come into play because it gives a wider palette of percussive sounds with a very small footprint. Since I've now taken a structural approach to playing güiro and bongo bell, it has allowed Wib to play more freely; the addition of more soloing surfaces goes a long way into offsetting the absence of a timbalero. There is also the opportunity for increased dynamics through the incorporation of contrasting son and pilón-style passages.

Future expandability's looking bright: without the presence of full-sized shells, there's room underneath to deploy pedal percussion (something Wib is very fluent with) like jamblock, cowbell, bass drum, triggered samples, hi-hats; and played with sticks, we could re-incorporate timbales with a bass drum and move to a songo-style sound. We'd have to move to practice rooms if we went down the latter route, but the set-up is very portable.

All this would have been for nought had the sound from the compact units had been of poor sound. There were some reservations: I figured that the open tones would lack sustain, body and warmth; biasing the way one played towards the dry slap strokes - my discussions with Karl of Electromusic (from whom I eventually purchased them) seemed to confirm that. However, Jeremy had played on them when he was in the States, and they had Giovanni Hidalgo and MIPA's endorsement on their side.

Latin Percussion's compact bongó and congas.
AfroCuban drums, but not as we know them

The promise of so much flexibility proved too much to endure, and so it was that the big LP stork placed the new baby into my arms last Friday. Tuning started that day and continued through most of 'Strictly Come Dancing' on Saturday, ready for use in anger on Sunday's practice. I took the time to settle the skins, made sure all the heads were tuned to each other, and most importantly of all, tensioned the heads for the fullest open tones.

Ana, Catie, Jan and Jeremy were mightily impressed. Catie called them 'space-age' thinking it weird that such a full sound could emanate from what was effectively a frame drum. I'm just as baffled. They play more like fibreglass drums: not a lot of warmth, but loads of projection and easy on the hands. The stands, although heavy-duty and double-braced, still flex a bit compared to a wooden shell under compression; and I had to adjust my strokes accordingly. They're so good that when it came time to discussing our transportation needs for Middlesborough, we all agreed that the compact units were the best choice for sound and space-saving.

My personal Brucie bonus is that bringing congas and bongó my salsa workshops is greatly facilitated. I'm looking forward to the greater liberty, spontaneity and interactivity that being unfettered from the CD player brings.

Long live innovation.

Loo Yen

Salsa Looming

This intrepid explorer's just barely touched down and already it's back into the fray. Five weeks have passed with just a slightest hint of Cuban rhythm and I'm faced with a full-on schedule preparing workshop materials for a weekender at Red Hat Salsa, and getting sexteto 4 de Diciembre fully lined up for a repeat Christmas concert further up north.

Sharon, the engine driving Red Hat in Reading, has yet to finalise a date - but it's going to be in about five weeks time when I make my way to deliver four workshops: two half-day ones and two 2-hour ones. It's all content that I'm consummately familiar with, but the key is in the structuring of it to minimise mental saturation. Sharon certainly doesn't lack ambition: the two half-day ones cover the entire extent of a full training-year of my teacher development programme (hence the concern over saturation). No doubt there'll be more blogging about it between now and then.

At the same time, I've got to prepare 4 de Diciembre, in sexteto format, for public performance. That's Ana (bass, vocals), Catie (flutes, vocals), Jan (violin, vocals), Jeremy (piano, vocals, clave), Wib (congas, bongó) and yours truly (lead vocals, hand percussion). The easy way would be to re-jig our set-lists slightly and gloss over the horn parts. The best way would be to lengthen each set by a song to account for shorter montuno sections; introduce the equivalent of a whole set of new material; and re-arrange the existing ones to make full use of the charanga format.

Where's the challenge in 'easy', eh?

Whatismore, we've chosen to cover some great but tough-to-interpret songs. Thankfully the guys have been plugging away at their individual parts, so we're quite some way down the road already - all this music director has to do is bring it all together. Piece of cake...

Loo

A Depth of Latin Culture: The Meaning of an Accent (Part 4)

Afterword
To a native Spanish speaker, it's usually possible to place the origins of a person by the accent he or she carries. Salsa is no different, but it seldom occurs to my students to think 'what does my manner of dancing speak of me?'

What accents inform the Colombian, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican and Venezuelan schools for example? Which of these are geographic, to be distinguished from the personal? What does the ungrounded the heel of the North American back-step actually mean (and it's not necessarily to do, as often professed, with not wanting to step on someone)?

Everything in the earlier parts can be distilled into one point: to achieve cultural depth, salsa dancers would need to learn more than salsa. Because how someone moves tells me plenty.

Maybe:

• the angle of your foot says you're quoting from urban Cuba;
• the shimmering quiver of your hips driven upwards from the knees is the voice of Puerto Rico's bomba;
  
• a certain stillness of your upper body hints at class distinction, perhaps from Caracas;
• your movement, inspired more by shells or skins, clues me to the kind of salsa playing in you car - or if you have any playing at all.
  

It's easy once you know where, and how, to look.

And for many, salsa is all they know and any accents I express pass them by unnoticed. It's a shame, because the subtext of a dance adds much to the whole enjoyment of it.

So leaping several logical steps ahead, perhaps the more pertinent question is, 'what would I want my dancing to say of me?'

looyenyeo