Where Is The Love?

Cafféteria is where I go for my regular poison. It might be true that a few yards farther, both Gusto Italiano and Caffé Nero share more luxuriant decor and narrowly a better bean. But whereas its more auspicious competitors are proud to deliver a good product as standard operating procedure, Cafféteria's girls show me the love.

It means a lot to me.

A touch of Gemma in the morning

If you found yourself smiling, you're feelin' it too.

I'm finding that my relationship with salsa is moving the same way. With less and less time on hand, there's no choice but to be increasingly selective about where I dance and whose lessons I attend (yes I still do occassionally). With the former, it used to be about great music.

It's now about where the music comes from; the disc jockey's heart, if you will.

I can forgive a multitude of sins if I know that the person behind the decks cares for whom he or she is playing. The operative words here are: 'care' as in the well-being sense; and 'for' instead of 'to'. It stems from my consistently lukewarm experiences of the Biggest and Best events, and the intimate and unexpected delights from the least assuming of venues.

My contention is that an emotional need cannot be fulfilled by solely rational circumstances - a compelling performance cannot be assured through technique alone. A competent DJ who really cares manages to communicate this in the atmosphere he or she generates, and it makes a world of impact on the clientele the DJ attracts and retains, and in constructing the night's cultural timbre. An observer should take just three to five songs, reading the deck-spinner and the crowd, to understand where the DJ is coming from.

Let's put it another way.

Below is a quote taken in entirety from a semi-open forum. It was expressed by a leading DJ for the response of other salsa-folk:

[quote]

Question?
What was THE salsa track that, many, many years ago was one that got you hooked? For everyone it will be something different.
But, I'll bet it wasn't Hacha Y Machete, or other such matured palette tracks.
Was it perhaps an Africando track? Was it a melodic Frankie Ruiz. Or even God forbid! Sonora Carruselles
We need to keep our minds open to the fact, that our over exposed tastes may be becoming prejudices. Seem exotic to the silent majority, in fact....
We all love salsa. If you want it to grow, it needs to be inclusive not exclusive.
All I've seen over the years is the salsa crowds, get smaller and smaller and the music become more and more exotic.
I can't help but think there is a directly proportional relationship.....
In truth if I had walked into a salsa club over a decade ago and heard the never ending hard core styles I hear today, I would have walked back out and never have bothered.
Cheese has it's place. It brings people in.
I'm not saying shit music should be played all the time. It just has it's place.
You can't grow quality Fruit and Veg, without a little manure.

[unquote]

The point regarding inclusivity and the arguments flowing from it are hard to ignore. The tenor bears no small element of condescension, imbuing the passage with a shade of arrogance. And yet the question is open, unguarded and disarmingly honest.

But for all its rationality, my question is, 'Where is the Love?'

What kind of participants does this DJ attract? What might be the timbre of the culture constructed?

And so I'm coming to redefine what I mean when I use the words 'good' or 'great'. People who work the decks do so because they draw from a complex pool of motivations, some being: a desire to share one's love of music; an economic need; external validation; political altruism; ideological conversion... To propose that there be just one reason would be a little bit naïve.

I'm looking for the mix that most suits me - Great coffee.

1. An admittedly commercial product (I don't mind paying for the good stuff);
   
2. Made up of good ingredients (it doesn't always have to be top-of-the-line, but right up there is nice);
3. Blended with loving care; and
   
4. Pitched with a good twist of humour.
   

Loo Yeo

P.S. My answer to the question is Proyecto Uno's "El Tiburón". It's a merengue, but I didn't know that at the time. And I still love it as much today as I did then.

A Place Or A Name?

I've been using Facebook as a research resource for a project I'm working on: looking at salsa all over the world, with an especially keen eye on communities where salsa is not indigenous like Asia and Australia. I signed in one morning to find that Bosco had left me a question about an experience he had in India which triggered a flurry of dialogue. Here's the (edited for brevity) wall-to-wall:

[begins]

Jose María Bustos:
Loo, as a musician I gotta ask you, while playing in Mumbai a woman walked up to me and said she loved my music, but why was it 'all on two' ? I glared at her and explained that there is no such thing as 'on one' or 'on two' music its all the same, but you can choose to dance it on one or on two.

Who has started this rumor that muscians actually sit down and say 'oh, lets write an 'on one' or an 'on two' track today. Its mambo, cha cha, timba whatever but never one or two. Can I get a witness on this!? or an I missing something here?

Loo Yeo:
I don't go out to write songs for 'on1' or 'on2', I don't know of any artists who do. However, you can certainly take a song and interpret it in a way that certain 'clans' of dancers would associate with. I'll be brave and say that the association occurs at the dance pedagogic end.

Very interesting experience you had there! What music did you play?

Also, I'm able to give you a more thorough response via a blog article. Mind if I address it by opening using the below (above in this case) as a quote?

Jose María Bustos:
Please do, by all means! Frankly I see it being bad for salsa if dance school perpetuate this notion and bad for music sales as well. You are correct it is a dance school notion and should be nipped in the bud!

Jose María Bustos:
Johnny Cruz, Bobby Valentin, Cheo Navarro, Willie Rosario, Issac Delgado, Hector Ramos, Mulenza, Eklan...

Loo Yeo:
hmm. You kept to Puerto Rican/Nuyorican salsa mainly? Was the Issac material pre-timba?

Jose María Bustos:
Dude, I play NYC style and the Issac is post Timba, as he's now amercianised himself with a more Miami sound, beat and arrangements. But I can mix it up with the best of em! Which brings me to Soneros All Stars 'La Timba Soy Yo' This is... ...my kind of Timba!!

Loo Yeo:
I think I understand more about the context of the lady in Mumbai's question. NYC salsa could have been associated with On2 purely on a geographical basis; instead of understanding which musical features should be significantly prominent (irrespective of source location) which might best suit an On2 style.

[ends]

NYC style. NYC salsa.

If we're talking dance then are we referring to Eddie Torres On2? Palladium or Power 2? How about Boogaloo? That's a style born of the great city. And Pachanga too. Both the last two are ostensibly On1...

And is the concept of synchronising a movement with beat two specific to NYC? Is "{anything}2" a NYC trademark? What of contratiempo or en clave which have been Cuban phenomena for more than a century?

What sort of music is New York salsa best danced to? Is it that which simply comes from New York? Fania, RMM, salsa dura, salsa romántica, DLG, Yerba Buena, La Excelencia, Orquesta Broadway, Wayne Gorbea?

What about El Gran Combo or Sonora Ponceña if they'd recorded in Puerto Rico?

Reading Mary Kent's biography of Eddie Torres featured on http://www.eddietorres.com/salsa.html

[quote]
"With no concept of timing, technique or theory, his instruction consisted of rudimentary pointers: "You hear that accent? That means you break forward with the left foot and when you hear it again, you break back." This is known as dancing on two, Eddie would soon find out.
Breaking on two meant that of a four beat measure, you stepped forward with the left foot on the second beat and on the second beat second measure you stepped back on the right foot. According to Eddie's mentor, Tito Puente, that's why beat two is so popular, because it compliments the tumbao of the conga and the rhythm section."
[unquote]
©1995 Mary Kent. All Rights Acknowledged.

It's exactly consistent with what he and I talked about in '96 when I first started dancing his style: then branded "Street 2".

I've played a lot of Latin percussion since, and realise that the accent Eddie's talking about is the slap stroke of the tumbao moderno on the conga. It's played on (what European-trained musicians recognise as) beat two. New York-style mozambique, a favoured rhythm of Eddie Palmieri, also has slap strokes on beat two; as well as on the 'and of 1' and 'and of 4' every other bar.

A caballo, also interpreted on the conga for pachanga, has slap strokes on beats one and three, with a hardly-audible ghost stroke on beat two. Slap strokes are generally optional in another New York favourite, the guaguancó originally from the West Cuban ports of Matanzas and La Habana (the slaps would precede the open tones to add definition, and work a fill in the phrase).

This means that if we were slavishly to adhere to the raison d'etre of Street 2, we would mainly be dancing only songs containing a tumbao moderno and NYC mozambiques. And hence any defensible critique of a DJ playing mainly "On2" tracks would require the critic being able to distinguish the likes of mozambiques, chachachás, and guarachas from the other likes of pachangas, guaguancós and songos.

Referring again to the first line of the quote from Mary Kent - I seldom come across On2 dance instructors, or On1 ones for that matter, who have a strong enough understanding of: the rhythmic structures of salsa, and the purposes which the On1 and On2 time-steps are meant to achieve, to be able to communicate this clearly to their students.

Sadly, the gap in this knowledge is papered over with the dogma 'NYC-style salsa dance is danced to NYC salsa music'.

More regretfully, this façade hides the richness of the basic time-step and how it may be varied to interpret the breadth of salsa's music. How many dancers think that there is only one way of executing the basic time-step, and that they've learned it already?

I know first-hand that the charismatic creator of "Street 2" emphasises adaptability, not rigidity. What makes him great to this very day, even when there are others who are flashier, younger and faster, is his desire to understand the Whys and to make sure that he fulfills seriously his responsibilities as an educator - that his students are informed to the best of his ability.

An educator empowers his students to choose, and eventually to own their knowledge. I stopped dancing On2 years ago. My partners now dance with me.

I should like that the rising stars of the salsa dance-teaching scene remember that there is more to it than just the excitement of travel, glamour of performance, and the adulation at the congresses. There is the very real task of being an educator, which unarguably requires more commitment than any prolonged training for a stage show.

And I should like that their young charges continue to ask the 'why?' of them, to release their ultimate potential.

Yeo Loo Yen

¡Ay Dios! Ampárame

I was sitting in a Coffeeshop yesterday evening after close of work, making additions to the salsa band facebook site, when my phone rang. Surprisingly, it was Nicolai. Surprising not that he would call, but this was not his 'social routine' time.

I was right. After a friendly exchange, it turned out that he had been partially double-booked i.e. overlapped, with his DJ gig here at Sheffield's Bar Cubana on Fridays. He was wondering if I was free to cover for him for the 30-45 minutes it would take for him to get there from his earlier engagement. "Sure" (I like saying yes, and whatismore, how can one resist Nicolai?).

Two years ago it would've been like water off a duck's back, but this time a little bit of inconvenience was involved. Even though I did have a lot of new material to introduce, I hadn't prepared the supporting information in the DJ sense.

"What's that mean?"

It's about not settling into a 'comfort zone' that I see many of my peers doing, where eventually, one can predict which songs they're going to play next. One of the factors contributing to it is they way they use a CD i.e. they mark down the tracks they will use only.

This means for example, that if they find two tracks that they would use on a CD, they would use those two exclusively and fail to revisit the whole CD as their skills develop. This negates the possibility that some of the remainder might become valuable as the DJ's set-building skills develop. Therefore the exclusive system of rating restricts a DJ's ability to develop.

I rate each song in an album: objectively in terms of length, tempo in beats per minute, and rhythm type; subjectively on a scale of 1-5 and whether or not it is accessible to an audience that is new to the genre. I revisit the subjective evaluation every couple of years.

Now back to my story...

Nicolai said that it would take only six or so songs, but I always pegged him as an optimist (bless him). At the very least I needed to be prepared for an hour. But I had to account for the fact that I hadn't DJed in a while, and that I had new albums that I was not as fully conversant with as I would have liked. This required one of my special non-standard strategies.

But before I get to that, I should say that I classify my music as 'music' and 'animal food' - not politically correct I know.

'Animal food', to put it bluntly, is for a target audience of dancers who are happy to remain ignorant and uncaring of any possible cultural connections. All they want is an obvious rhythmic structure to which they can perform their vocabulary. Notice I use the word 'to' and not 'in' - the latter would imply that they did so in tempo. 'Music' satisfies the cultural insider as well as the interested outsider at a multitude of levels becuase the pieces would including socio-political commentary and significant cultural motifs.

And before any readers of my diary get up in arms about it, contents of the two groups aren't mutually exclusive.

I took these CDs:

• 8 get-out-of-jail-free cards: 4 of music, 4 of animal food.
  These are albums, single artist or compilations, where every single track is usable under the broadest range of circumstances e.g. 'Mandali' - Africando (animal food), 'Llego...' - Los Van Van (music).
  
• 8 mood-changers/floor-fillers: again 4 of music, 4 of animal food. These would give me the rhythmic and melodic diversity to change direction and texture. Typically there would be 2 or 3 tracks per album. Examples: 'Pa'l Bailador' - Johnny Polanco (animal food), 'Island Life' - Yerba Buena (music). I call them fulcrum pieces.
  
• 8 new and relatively new albums. For DJs of my kind these are the lifeblood of our playlists.
  

The Rationale
I view every evening of music in the same way as I understand dance, and that is having stability, movement, and innovation. The dynamism of the set is based on the level of mood-movement and innovation, and that itself is dependent on the inclination of the audience that particular evening.

The get-out-of-jail-free cards form the backbone, and buy me resting time should I need it when looking for the appropriate new song. It also makes sure my audience have a comfort zone that I can return them to.

The fulcrum pieces allow me to change moods, so my audience has short-term identity and long-term variety.

The innovations are why music and dance evolves. They are hard work to learn how to incorporate effectively into a set, but without new pieces, how else can we keep a scene fresh and vital? (Many DJs I know who play day-in day-out sadly take the easy route and eventually stop allocating enough energy and time to deploying new music thoughtfully.)

Two dozen CDs is quite a lot to take for just an hour or so, but you never know what sort of audience you're going to get at Cubana. At its extreme, I'd only have a dozen to choose from and that would average one track from each CD.

How the night panned out
I always start as I mean to go on. Only the good stuff.

Some people play not-so-good songs at the start and pull out the fancy stuff later. To them I say, "why don't you build a collection full of the good stuff instead of padding it out with cheap filler?" (i.e. Jamie Oliver's equivalent of turkey twizzlers.)

45 minutes into the set, everyone's on the dance floor. There's a bunch of Cubans, some Venezuelans and Colombians, other motley Latin Americans plus Interested Outsiders. I know it's going to be a 'Music' night. Fantastic!

Monica from the bar informs me that Nicolai's called and that they're running 15-20 minutes late. That's okay, I anticipated that. Things are going great.

I play it pretty safe and straight-up since I don't want to paint Nicolai into a corner in terms of atmosphere when he turns up to take over. I'm just over halfway through my armoury of tracks of this class (the safe-straight-up class).

I get a call from Helena (a friend and Nicolai's salsa partner) but mobile reception sucks and we get cut off thrice. Monica from the bar tells me that Nicolai's car has broken down and she asks if I have enough music to make it through the night on my own. I say, "I don't think so". She hands me Cubana's folder of material, which frankly, is the stuff I'd never touch. No offence - it's just not my style.

Time to get radical.

Situation Report
I know I'm running out of safe tracks, and that I have to start using more tracks from the same artist and album (SAA). I have a 'Music' audience. Irrespective, I have to start taking risks.

I need to increase the dynamism of the night, using fulcrum pieces to swing the moods farther to extremes. I can then deploy songs from the SAA in the middle of the movements, and the general audience won't notice what I've done.

Execution
The main fulcrum pieces were from 'Island Life' by Yerba Buena, and 'El Amor De Mi Tierra' by Carlos Vives. The associations of songs extended from common artists, producers, era, and musical movement to include the lead instrument frequency range. Every 'risky' piece had at least one best-case and worst-case sequence exit route.

Although my material was heavily overspecified to the 45min parameter, it was way underspecified for 3 hours. But I wanted to avoid digging deelply into the 'animal food' compartment; it would not have been fair on the music-loving dancers there.

There were a number of occassions where I put on a song and crossed my fingers. A normal audience would not have gone for it I'm sure, but I felt I had some measure of the dancers there last night. To their credit they just took it in with aplomb; whatever I threw at them, they just danced and danced and danced.

It was an object lesson for the Interested Outsiders, and the general public.

At the end, when the lights came up and 'Havana City' died away, I found myself reminded of what I'd been missing in eschewing DJing for Cuatro de Diciembre (not that that will change anytime soon).

As I left, the doorman took me aside and spoke of the number of people who had said how good the music had been tonight; and that he had not heard patrons speak like that before. A grin split his face.

It was done on the back of just over a dozen CDs.

I would have walked home in a fog of smug if not for recognising one thing: thank God for music-loving Latins.

Loo Yen