Predictable Outcomes

The core members of 4 de Diciembre have been together for a decade, and you would've thought that I'd have the measure of them by now. But even after all this time they conspire to surprise me.

We've been booked for a prominent gig next year, and with such a supposedly-distant horizon, the inclination is take things at a sedentary pace. I certainly didn't want that to happen. To stop the claws of complacency from digging in, I sat the band down and sketched a vision of the ideal playlist; a challenging roadmap if you will, of the best I thought we could be by that time. It's essential for everyone to understand and share the same vision; 'buy-in' is key to maintaining a healthy ensemble.

Two pieces of the puzzle to be put in place were a couple of cover adaptations: 'La Gota Fría' based on Carlos Vives' version, and 'One World' by local Sheffield band 'Boy On A Dolphin'. When suggesting these, I thought the former would pose the greater challenge; we'd never tackled a vallenato before, whereas the latter bore more familiar motifs.

We tackled One World first, and my optimism soon got bogged down in the quagmire of frustration - its chord structures, the very thing that made it interesting, didn't fit the modal system that underpins salsa. There was also dastardly a one-chord vamp section that had Jeremy scratching his head in trying to keep it more tasty than musical cardboard. He and I consigned two Sunday afternoons to the salsa wastebasket before I tried something out of the box of Desperation.

I slapped on a version of Xiomara on the CD player and proceeded to sing One World's lyrics over two different sections of piano montuno. Jeremy and I are of very different music backgrounds and have highly contrasting approaches to salsa, which has always been our strength. The most important thing I had to do was to demonstrate what was possible. He got it. We spent a few minutes determining which was the more suitable base progression, changed some chording to double its cycle length, and we had it! What was looking like an attempt I might have to bin, transformed into a song of promise; and one which we were well on the way to making our own.

Decent quasi-salsa songs in English are as rare as hen's teeth and One World, with its different harmonic textures and meaningful lyrics, complements any of 4de12's originals perfectly. It was a relief to crack it and be able to add it to our stable.

Given the birthing troubles of One World, I was a little gun-shy about approaching La Gota Fría last night. That's probably why I left it until the last thing at practice, almost as an afterthought.

One pass of the song, lasting all of three minutes and thirty-two seconds, was what it took to nail the core of it. That included transformation to salsa piano vamp over a hypnotic jungle-inspired conga rhythm, glued together by a funk variation of the classic bass tumbao, while still holding true to the spirit of the piece's energy and melody of haunting undertones. The latter is preserved by Catie on the flute and the adaptation of the accordion's lines to Jan's violin. On hand percussion, I found that the cumbia's güira rhythm on the gourd scraper worked best.

What an astounding experience.

True, plenty more creativity and work will have to be exercised before these two songs will be polished to my satisfaction. But at least I can now envisage it happening, whereas I couldn't before. And the band-members do so too.

Only one thing is certain: that the mercurial talents (and I can think of no more apt a description) of my fellow Decemberists will conspire to keep me safe from predictable outcomes.

Loo Yeo