May 2007 Sabroso@Interval Café, Sheffield

This was the the first time for us back on stage since the Donut gig, and with a significantly changed line-up:

• Dan has moved from rhythm guitar to timbales and is doing a fine job;
• Mike joined us just a couple of months ago, and is a great trombonist whose sense of humour comes across when he plays;
• Nathan has emerged from behind the timbales to take on vocals (lead and backing) and hand percussion;
• Wib joined us as a direct result from the Donut gig and is our new conguero;
• I've also stepped out from behind the congas and am fulfilling the same role as Nathan.

I think it's great for many reasons:

• Dan and Wib have an understanding of each other's musicianship based on years of playing live together;
• Mike brings a wealth of experience of playing soul, jazz and blues which is something we very much needed;
• there is more opportunity for interaction in the melodic arragements, which augments the montuno section of our songs;
• the rhythmic 'thickness' of our sound has been increased with both Nathan and I playing hand percussion;
• having two lead singers with different vocal ranges makes a wider range of songs possible;
• we have a high level of redundancy, meaning we can take on more gigs; and
• (selfishly) I can have a rest from singing during a set.

Woo-Hoo! This signals the dawning of a brave new world. Long live Cuatro de Diciembre!

Okay, as with any change in line-up, there is a period of instability. But even with that in mind and based on last night's performance, there's plenty of potential to be realised in this new line-up.

Joy.
Loo

Cuban Salsa over a Chinese Restaurant

I found myself in Manchester not too long ago, courtesy of Jane and Christophe (they're still putting up with me!), at a salsa evening orgainsed by Cuban style dance teachers.

Moso Moso is an interesting place to hold such a thing: the floor's good although the room can get a little bit warm due to the low ceiling, but the real icing on the cake must be the intriguing possibility of having Dim Sum downstairs should the fancy take me. Now that just appeals to my sense of humour.

The music was a pleasant change; being more Cuban than what is normally played at the other nights I skulk into. The reggaeton towards the end of the night is not quite my cup of tea, but I'm open-minded enough to enjoy (and occassionally partake of) the spectacle. The most striking thing, to me as a dancer and a teacher, is how good the standard of timing was. That is, everyone I danced with and observed. Sure, there was the expected variation in physical abilities, but there was I didn't experience the "uncomfortable struggling with a partner whose timing skills had remained vestigeal due to move-blinkering" thing all night.

That surely must be a positive endorsement on the student and dance-culture engendered by Susan and Juan of Salsa de Cuba. I like the way they try to help their students appreciate salsa in its cultural context, and I'm glad to see that there are takers for this approach.

This wasn't my first visit there, although it was the first in a long time. If you like Cuban music, and a chance to dance in that style, I think you might want to pop in and check it out.

Loo Yeo

Cándido's Tumbao

The tail end of last week was when we managed to get the equipment fully synch'ed. The Dell PowerEdge 2950 running with Cubase, the latency of the Focusrite Saffire Pro down to 2.0ms, high quality cables throughout, the lower-output Mackie HR824 replaced, and everything that was eligible hooked up to the Apogee Big Ben.

I'm still disappointed that the Saffire has a propensity to disconnect itself due to driver instability. This is a known issue, and I'm impatient to have that problem resolved because it's a lump in our workflow; trying to get it to re-engage after it drops out. I understand why it's so well regarded and reviewed, but surely this matter needs prompt attention. I was also surprised with the Mackie monitor not living up to its reputation in terms of quality assurance. The theory goes that they're delivered to retailers in four-unit clusters, and consecutive serial numbers are matched. This has not been my experience. One of the pair was DOA out of the box. The other pair had a nearly 6dB disparity in output. Eventually I found one that matched closely enough the output of my original "hot" one, but was far from being consecutive.

Given that the Big Ben is reputed to increase resolution of the stereo field, unmatched monitors don't make that assessment possible. I'm figuring out solutions now.

On Sunday we were back in the recording saddle once again, beginning with the guide piano and vocals for "Tiempo para el amor". Then the conga and tumba were set up and mic'ed. There followed a marathon session of my playing Cándido's tumbao for "Llamada de Ogún" until I got an acceptable take. Now I can play the regular stuff in my sleep / 'til the cows come home but this groove is something else altogether. It's a lot like the bassline in "Corazón Fugitivo" which reveals errors and drift very easily. When that happens, the only option is to start all over again.
Several hours later, we got a stronger take than the one I'd laid down a few months ago. Nailing a finalised take of Bolero rítmico and tumbao moderno for "Tiempo para el amor" was a snap after that.

Monday and yesterday were supposed to be bassline recording days, but with my left hand still tired from the conga session, Dan and I thought it best not to push the issue, and we went to first mixdown mode instead finishing six songs. We should have "Recordando África" and "Llamada de Ogún" finished before band practice tonight; so the band can have it as a take-home pressie.

So I've got a lot to look forward to... a fun-packed evening promising capers and frolicks as we prepare for our gig (with brand spanking new line-up) on the 20th.

Loo Yeo

All Has Not Been Quiet On The Western Front

Although it might seem like it from the lack of postings.

I was hoping to write sooner, once we had every scrap of equipment up and running, but that's proved not to be the case - must be one of life's universal constants. So we've laid down the guide melodics for six of our eight recorded songs and have run out of tracks until we manage to offload and configure playback from our pc. That's the hold-up. So this week has been set aside for infrastructure and configuration issues, after the resolution of which we should be flying along again.

I did manage to find the time to pop along to Bar Cubana on Friday, as a consolation for not being able to attend Dan's 21st Birthday party, after being held up due to the family business. Having not seen so many friends in several months, it was nice to be reacquainted either on the dance floor with the ladies, or on the sidelines with the gents. Dancing in such a confined space is no small challenge, but it was great just to get out from the hermitesque existence of a DIY recording musician. It was the perfect excuse to keep it simple and basic, and much more enjoyable for it.

Keeping the dance structure as open as possible leaves lots of room for rhythmic embellishments. Over the years, there's been less and less call for the use of turns to generate variety. Perhaps this is what it means to dance as a musician.

More later,
Loo

Good Friday 2007

was the day I realised that I could sing. I know how immodest that sounds, so maybe I should explain.

I've been singing in the band for three years now, and all this while I've only heard myself recorded a couple of times: once was at a recording studio barely a year since I'd taken over from our previous lead, Olga; the other was when I was laying down the guide vocals for our current recordings. It's pretty fair to say that neither of them were representative conditions, the former because my voice and vocal style were still developing, and the latter was done ad hoc simply to get the job done quickly.

The rest was at gigs, where everything is transient: you sing or play a note, and then the moment's gone. Also, we were lucky in that the salsa audiences we had played for were extremely friendly and possibly a forgiving bunch... so I was never quite sure.

Good Friday was the chosen day when Dan recorded lead vocals for eight of the ten songs we've laid down so far for our first cd. I expected a marathon day, and got one, although we were both extremely pleased that we managed final takes of all eight. For the record, I sang into a Neumann TLM103 connected to a Focusrite Liquid Channel. 'Surprised' isn't the right word, neither is 'pleased'. Satisified and happy maybe; that the vocal coaching, effort and practice had all paid off. Our project is a ProTools and midi-free zone and we're determined to keep it that way.

The Neumann is an honest mic, as Dan likes to put it, and it seems to me to reveal my every strength and shortcoming: rich tonal colours as well as the most embarrasing burbles, squeaks and honks (at the most inopportune moments). Rest assured that the vocals were redone from scratch until an artefact-free take of the right mood was sung.

I've never heard my voice like that before. Ever. And that's the strongest ever testament to the quality of Dan's engineering.

This project as a learning process is of immeasureable value; feedback is immediate and uncompromising. So I'm a little sad to be stepping away from the vocal mic, or at least to have begun the process of stepping away. I forsee my commitments in business to take me away from the band increasingly, so it was only fair that I do so. But at least I can still expect to sing lead for the remaining two songs of the suite when they're recorded. Hopefully in a few months' time.

Until I can resume a firm commitment to the band, I'll just have to be satisfied with the role of guest tresero.

Actually now that I put it that way, it doesn't sound too bad does it?

Loo Yeo

Catching Up With Salsa

I'm back after four weeks in the Far East, which saw me chomping my way through a myriad delicacies over Chinese New Year, and doing very little salsa. I only danced once and saw a club band on the night of my bro's birthday. When I came back, boy was I itching to get some music done.

During my absence, 4 de Diciembre has undergone some (planned) changes to both line-up and practice structure at least temporarily; triggered by our recording project and the possibility of my reduced involvement due to business commitments.

• The band has split into two sections: percussion, rhythm and vocals; and melodics. The latter have been focussing their efforts on their arrangements in light of their upcoming recording; having mixdowns of the tracks has proved a vital catalyst. They've done a great job so far with the first tranche of four songs, which we were given the opportunity to listen to on Thursday past. In the former, Nathan's taken up the role of lead vocals, Dan's moving onto timbales, and we have a prospective new conguero called "Wib". It's too early to say yet how Wib will turn out, he's a trap-set drummer by training. From previous experience in teaching, I know it takes a while to get used to the hand drums and the Afrocuban idiom, so I'm hoping for the best.
• On days when I'm not required as a conguero, I'll be moving onto tres. It will provide us with a further propulsive rhythm vamp that will complement Jeremy on piano; it's an instrument that I've wanted to play for a long time; it's portable so I can take it with me and still be able to keep in touch with our music (I anticipate having to travel quite a bit soon); and it gets me out from behind the congas when we have to gig. Maybe that last point wasn't a plus.
• Recordings are starting again with Ana scheduled to lay down maracas tracks today, and Nathan the guiro tomorrow. Dan has this weekend free, so I'm hoping that we can lay down stronger piano and bass tracks or bongo bell, or both.
• There's more equipment arriving this week: a second hard disk recorder, a reflexion shield, a Neumann TLM103, a Focusrite Liquid Channel, a couple of high capacity HDDs and assorted cables.
• I've had a chance to work through the inspiraciones to our ninth song, and have bounced them back to Ana for amendment.
• Still pending later this week is for me to sort out a basic montuno pattern for the chorus of our tenth song.

It's not all work. Christophe and Jane have offered to take me to see Alex Wilson in Derby on Friday, which was an opportunity I jumped at. That'll teach me for spending a month eating mom's home-cooked food!

A rather portly Loo

Donut Training Grounds

Yesterday was a marathon day at Donut Creative Arts Centre in Chesterfield. And it was a bright sunny day too. I ran the conga workshops whilst Ana and Jeremy did the hand percussion, and Nathan and Dan the timbales. With such a wide range of abilities, it's always a challenge. The jam session after lunch was manically fun with Nathan on bass, Dan on timbales, Wibbo on drums and me on piano at one stage.

It's been such a long time since I touched the keys.

Then there was the gig later in the evening. The sound setup was exceptional yet again, under (the other) Dan's sure hand. I wish he was portable; we'd take him to every gig. Must make a note to ask our Dan to solder a couple of flight-case handles on him.

The folk of Chesterfield probably don't realise how lucky they are to have such a gem of a facility on their doorstep that put on such events like the Cultural Music Programme I was just inolved with. Headed by Bri(an) Evans, the training there in sound technology has produced high quality professional enginners - despite being vocational in nature.

A truly remarkable achievement. I'd love to take up their sound training programme if ever the opportunity arose.

Loo

Just Let Me Catch My Breath

Less than a week now before I jet off to sunnier climes, but before then there's the no-small matter of workshops and a performance at Donut - a highly successfully run youth programme for aspiring musicians, complete with recording studio. The emphasis is on edcuative development.

The link here is Dan, our guitarist and erstwhile bassist who was trained in sound recording there.

So this Sunday, we're running percussion workshops to show the young musicians how they might incorporate percussion themes of Latin American origin into their own music. You might be surprised to hear that I'm doing the congas bit. In the evening, there's to be a dance lesson followed by a performance by our salsa band.

Jeremy's really pulled out the stops and downloaded the tracks for our eight songs that we've recorded so far, and Dan's doing the mixdowns for us to arrange our melodics and percussion to. Hopefully, Jeremy will have a piano montuno track for me before I leave so that I can work out my inspiracion melodic lines for the ninth song.

When I get back we'll be experimenting with a shuffling of roles, with Dan on timbales, Nathan on vocals and congas, and me on backing vocals and hand percussion or tres. I think that I might have to travel more this year as Verdant's business develops, and it would be unfair to leave Cuatro de Diciembre in the lurch, so we're trying to build some redundancy into the system.

In some ways, I'd relish the opportunity to play tres and learn the instrument better. Let's face it, I'm an Eliades Ochoa wannabe. But it won't happen in this lifetime.

Loo Yen Yeo

I Bleed for My Art

The past couple of weekends we've been back on the recording saddle. Much of the material has been from me in this early phase; the guide vocals, congas, and bass. The good thing about the playing hiatus was that return to playing music was very enjoyable, the downside being blisters and other incovenient non-tone-enhancing wounds.

We're a little behind schedule due mostly to fluctuations in (my) performance, but I hope to have caught up by this evening. Then it's to laying down the hand percussion and doing a mixdown to help with the arrangements for the melodic instruments. All very timely really, considering that I'm jetting off to Penang for Chinese New Year.

The other upside is that Jeremy's found the time to provide me with the timing tracks for the Salsa Ear Training tutorials on Congas indicating clave orientation and dancing to Rumba clave. I was glad to make them live yesterday; the material had been written for more than eight months; a measure of how busy we've been with the band.

I don't anticipate that there will be additions to the website at the same rapid pace in the near-to-mid term, now that the restructuring's finished. The strategic decision I took in positioning the content of the site has paid off, and I'm looking forward to filling in the current gaps before expanding it further.

Now, on to more music.

Loo Yen Yeo

Salsa Blog January

Hey.

I'm back from the break and itching to go.

The past few weeks have been excitingly kind to my salsa: I've finished reading "Music in Cuba"; watched a couple of DVDs on Yambú and Guaguancó, which deepened my appreciation of rumba no end (review coming in due course); wrote and posted three tutorials; and my pursuit of dancing on half-beats has bestowed me with information I needed for a rhythm tutorial.

On the website front, I AM going to redistribute the dance skills material to open up a new tutorial category. And I am confident that it will give rise to a more intuitive navigation structure. I've only just now finished the draft of the final dance skills tutorial on whole body cascade, and I'm considering renaming dance skills (and all the hassle it entails).

The tres playing is coming along just fine, as my callouses will attest to, and I'm starting to think that that is where my long term future in Cuban music lies. I've still got at least a year before I understand the instrument well enough to make that kind of decision.

Half the band is still away on respective sojourns, so we won't start for a couple of weeks yet. All precious time to me!

Okay, gotta scoot.

Loo

Last Post of the Year 2006

Cuatro de Diciembre's been going from strength to strength, we couldn't have imagined how far we've come along in a year: we've got a fully developed repetiore which suits our ethos of music-making right down to the ground; our original music is on a par with the very best of the classic covers that we do, and there's an evolving synergy between our recording and live activities. We saw that at our last gig of the year at Sabroso, where our recorded songs formed a solid spine for a cracking playlist.

Next year promises more exciting developments as our recordings edge towards completion. We're just a few equipment pieces short of being able to record everything the way we want, namely: a great pair of stereo mics for recording timbales, a Shure Beta 91 kick-drum mic, a transparent pair of studio monitors, and a high quality valve compressor for vocals.

Most of December's been dedicated to carving out the shape of a new song for our upcoming CD to bring the total number up to 10. The theme is done and I've isolated the feel of the montunos. The next step is to get the Spanish lyrics saying what I mean them to say and matched to the montunos. That should take a few more weeks yet. In the meanwhile, the montuno section to one of the songs has been re-developed much to my relief. That had been bugging me for the past year now, and it's been raised to the same comparably high standard as the rest of the suite.

I've also picked up the tres again for the first time in years, and that's my main target for this break, to get two of guajeos up to recording standard for a couple of songs. Having played a lot of bass and some guitar in the intervening period has changed my approach to palying that instrument, for the better.

I think you'd have noticed that the band is central to my activites. But rest assured that that's not all. I'm half-way through writing the next tutorial and hope to have it posted early in the new year. I've nearly finished Alejo Carpentier's book, and have already started Cuban Miami by by Robert M. Levine and Moises Asis. You can expect ideas raised by these sources to feed into the website as soon as I finish the tutorials: most probably first in the salsa glossary and salsa timeline.

I'd love to write more, but it's taking me away from the things I urgently have to do. So until next year,

Loo Yeo

End of November synopsis

(a personal record):

• Reading
  More than half way through Alejo Carpentier's "Music in Cuba". Will be followed by "Cuban Miami" (and Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential").
  
• Tutorial writing
  Planning the first Hip Isolation lesson. Hope to have two tutorials on hip isolation finished by the end of the year.
  
• Song-writing
  Penning the inspiraciones for the fifth song (the last one to complete) of our suite right now. Then to work out the melodies and get it into the practice room.
  
• Recording
  Polishing the two remaining basslines for our first phase of four songs. Then to lay down the hand percussion layers of Phase I. Begin recording the guide vocals to Phase II.
  
• Playing
  Just three more songo variations to master on the tumbadores before I can move on to other rhythms and soloing strategies. Rehearse guitar montunos for our original songs and start developing guajeos on the tres for two of them.
  
• Dancing
  Solidify timing as regards dancing on the upbeats (in between the beats). Focus on rumba guaguancó movement.

That should gobble up all of my spare time all the way through to the new year. Yuletide's looking pretty fine!

Loo Yen

In a Teaching State of Mind

Well that's another salsa tutorial done, which means I can post this much belated blog entry.

It's been pretty hard getting back into the teaching mindset; more specifically writing for a web-delivered tutorial because of its unique constraints and demands. I've just done two in a row: on lateral chest isolation and on circular movement of the torso which completes the upper-body level programme. Roll on to the hips next.

I'm only just feeling as if I'm into the swing of things again. And since efficiency is a big thing with me, I'll stick with the lesson writing for a good while to save having to shift mental gears. I've always maintained that I get as much out of doing this as those who use them, although there seems always to be a point in the process where I question that; usually when I'm struggling to articulate a tough concept.

So all in all, things are going well, and I'm looking forward to completing the body movement series over the next few months. I've nearly convinced myself that the 'Using Rhythm' tutorials deserve their own section, but there has to be more content to warrant that (and you know what that means).

Loo Yen Yeo

"Salsa Talks" by Mary Kent

"Salsa Talks" is another book that I'd managed to finish just recently.

It's a large book, comprising intimately candid interviews coupled with some marvellous photographs; a volume that brings the protagonists of salsa to life in a way that I've found no other book has been able to.

Despite the dedication of a good portion of its contents to pictures, sometimes duplicated which left me wondering if it was a design feature or "padding", the interview transcriptions are meaty but simultaneously easy to read. This is a welcome change from the normal fare which is either extremely well researched but stodgy, being derived from someone's musicology thesis; or so under-researched and misrepresented as to be misleading.

This book is SUCH a refreshing change.

Salsa Talks gives something back to you every time you read it: the way the artists express themselves about their work; their recollection of the times; their hopes. Many of them have passed on now, a comment on how long Mary's journey has been.

It has helped me personally on so many levels:

1. much of the flotsam of information I'd gathered from a multitude of sources finally came together within the context of the narratives, making salsa clearer and more comprehensible;

2. my listening appreciation of music became more profound as I came to understand what the artists were personally going through and thinking at that time; and

3. their comments about how they approached their work gave me valuable insight into how I might interpret salsa myself as a musician.

Over and above everything else, Salsa Talks communicates with passion, a sense of Time and Place; that's something books don't do often enough.

I'm glad that this one is with us, because it makes us all the richer for it.

Loo Yen Yeo

"Cuban Music from A to Z" by Helio Orovio

Illustration (left) ©Copyright 2004 Duke University Press. All Rights Acknowledged.

I've just finished reading Helio Orovio's "Cuban Music from A to Z", which I'd been meaning to do for a while now, but thought the prospect of tackling it in Spanish a little daunting. Luckily my courage was given a reprieve when the translated version hit the shelves a couple of years back. The encyclopedic entries make reading the book a very dry experience if you approach it from cover-to-cover, which is understandable as it was designed as a reference work.

Nonetheless, doing so at a leisurely canter gave this reader a sense of the book's scope, what the author thought to be important, and what is not so. It would be unfair to dwell on its inaccuracies: like the unlikelihood of people dying before they were born; or some of its glaring omissions like not mentioning the likes of Pedrito Calvo whilst maintaining and entry for his colleague Orlando Canto; simply because this work has no equivalent in the English language arena.

The balance of information seems to be heavily polarised, with plenty of weight given to musicians of Cuban-European music and practices of African origin, with not much in between. It's as if the cataloguing began with a very pro-European bias, and was only recently redressed with some very Africa-centric entries in an attempt to render it some sense of balance. It's a far from perfect work, but its very utility will ensure that Mr. Orovio's name will continue to stare back at me from spine of the book on the shelf for many years to come.

And one final thing.

Reading it serially, hard on the palate though it might have been, gave me a sense of the Cuban contribution, in part, to the development of salsa.

But tellingly, it was missing the names of non-Cubans commonly mentioned as staples in other books of this genre, that told me just as much. The likes of Johnny Pacheco, the Palmieri brothers, and El Gran Combo. I guess there is truth in the saying "You don't recognise the value of something until it's gone".

Loo Yen Yeo

The Promised Land

When the band started back out on the gig trail a few months ago, I remember approaching the prospect with some trepidation; not that I was concerned about our ability to perform live. No, it wasn't that at all. I knew that the large well of studio experience would always stand us in good stead, despite major changes in line-up and playlist.

It was always going to be more of how we would manage the tensions between that of recording and that of performing live. Such is there a demand for a solid salsa band that I knew we would be inundated with requests, which would in turn put pressure on our opportunities to record. But at the same time, our songs (the original ones) needed to be played in order to mature and realise their full potential. And fully matured songs are the ones that I think should be recorded. A classic Catch-22.

So it has come to pass we're pretty much booked up through to our December break.

We're due to play at a mini-congress in a couple of weeks, and we're more than ready. The process was accelerated somewhat when we were invited to play at a sold-out event for fifteen-hundred a few weeks back. Preparing for that unexpected gig placed us under no small amount of pressure and I, as music director, behaved like a bear with a sore head to get us ready in time. Contrary to popular belief, that's not my preferred method of conducting operations.

That was followed shortly after by our monthly gig at the Interval Cafe to a more intimate crowd. It was nonetheless, just as well received.

As a result of all this, 4 de Diciembre has entered the "Promised Land" ahead of time: we have at a high performance standard, two full length sets plus a variety of encore numbers; and more importantly, the fresh stage experience to cope with inevitable unexpecteds (like imperfect monitoring) with good humour.

Band practices have returned to the joyous, even mirthful, occassions they once were - now that we've passed from the fraught song acquisition phase to the more creative optimisation stage.

Paradise.

Yeo Loo Yen

7th October 2006 4 de Diciembre headlining the Intro Fiesta@Octagon Centre, University of Sheffield

The Intro Fiesta is one of three glittering jewels in the crown of the University of Sheffield's International Students' Committee (ISC), the other two being the International Cultural Evening and the International Food Evening. And of the three, the Fiesta is the dearer to my heart - having the fondest of memories attached to it; existing purely for the enjoyment of the students (unlike the display-based other two); and, being located right at the beginning of the school year, it wears the atmosphere of jubilant optimism.

Photograph courtesy of E-Leen
Copyright©2006 E-Leen. All rights reserved.

Our road to this event was not an easy one. I'd been preparing 4 de Diciembre for a gig at a salsa weekender in Doncaster and all of our practices were geared to get us ready in that time. When the band accepted Luis Ananguren's (the International Student Secretary) invitation to play, my timetable of preparation dramatically compressed from five weeks two weeks. Oops!

There was also a plague of uncertainties: Catie and Carolyn were due to holiday in Skye and looked as if they weren't able to join us; some horse-trading with the timeslots we were to play in; and slightly lumpy matters with the sound reinforcement. The first two impacted very much on what and how we played; and it wasn't the eleventh hour, literally one week before, before I knew for certain that both Catie and Carolyn could make it and that we'd be expected to play two thirty-minute sets.

The not-knowing made it a real challenge at practices in the run-up.

On a gray autumn Saturday afternoon, we deposited ourselves and our gear at the loading bay of the Octagon centre; we'd even brought our own complement of microphones to save the student-run technical crew time. Otherwise they would have had to swap them and their EQ settings between us and the opening reggae/dub band.

We began our three o'clock start at four; were soundchecked for 120 minutes though played less than 15; made to finish before the end; and hustled off stage to make way for a late earlier band. I kept thinking to myself "erm, okay, hitches are normal for a gig". Then we found out that we were doing one sixty-minute set instead. And that we were playing at the later time of 22:30hrs.

We were left with four hours to unwind, and I was struck by how unwise it was a thing to do as I watched Decemberists gambol about their environs.

Sweet sweet love: Piñata-thumpin'
Photograph courtesy of TMirando.
Copyright©2006 TMirando. All rights reserved.

The main hall of the Octagon Centre lives up to its name and houses up to eight hundred seated (more standing) - it's a popular stop for big UK acts who choose to warm up on the university circuit before a national tour. The spacious stage is set 1.5 metres off the ground, and the room 's acoustics reward careful handling. The whole venue lends itself well to the performer in setting up an atmosphere, so long as you can get more than four hundred souls on the floor.

Not a problem, tonight was already a sell-out.

The many international groups were well underway with setting up their cultural areas: from Mexican to Malaysian; with activities from face-painting to henna-tattooing. And once we spotted the sumo ring, well... that was it! The angst of the previous hours was wrestled away and by the time the opening band "I Witness" came on to lay us back with their tunes, we were in peril of over-chilling.

A pink pair of Malaysians
Photograph courtesy of MASSoc.

Sumo! Just like the real thing except the ceremonial salt
Photograph courtesy of MASSoc.

I looked at my watch. Things were running very, very late. Joining the hubbub at side of stage, I read disappointment in the faces of the teachers, Dan and Kate, who would have been giving the salsa and merengue lesson. I braced for what was coming next - it was well past 11.00p.m.

4 de Diciembre had one forty-minute set. The ISC tried to be gracious saying that we could spill over if we had to, but a few seconds with my fellow band-mates was enough: we didn't need to put the night any deeper into a jam; and we could distill our playlist down into the punchiest of killer sets. 4de12 had been highly billed, and this was going to be the most gracious way of managing disappointment.

Cuatro de Diciembre on the starting blocks
Photograph courtesy of CSTan.
Copyright©2006 CSTan. All rights reserved.

The eight of us: Ana (bass, vocals), Carolyn (sax), Catie (flute), Dan (guitar), Jan (violin), Jeremy (piano, vocals, clave), Nathan (timbales) and myself (lead vocals, congas) mounted the stairs and broke out the heavy artillery. After the mellow sounds of reggae, the audience's blood had to get pumping for the DJs afterwards.

We so totally rocked the house.

Photograph courtesy of SGammati
Copyright©2006 SGammati. All rights reserved.

I can still see with my mind's eye, a sea of bobbing faces aglow with the many colours from the overhead stage lights. The one definitive lasting memory of the night however, was during "Yo soy el sonero" which Ana and I wrote in a traditional East Cuban style; enjoying the sight of a large group of Latinos waving a Cuban flag, jumping up and down with their thumbs up in the air.

It was worth the cost of every trial, just for that one moment.

looyenyeo

Guitarra Mía

At last I feel as if I'm making headway; for a number of years now I'd made repeated efforts at cracking the guitar and tres; and although each time I tried I succeeded in making some progress, I never generated enough momentum to see it through. It was shaping up to become one of life's regrets. Thankfully this time it's different; and I put it down to having invested an inordinate amount of thought into drawing up a detailed plan AND sticking to it like a pit-bull to a postman's shin.

I had set a final target of a six song mini-set: varied but with mutually complementary numbers, covering the range of styles and absorbing the techniques that I wanted. The styles are típico to modern, and the techniques were designed to allow me to play the guajeo style of Arsenio Rodriguez over a complementary AfroCuban bassline adapted from the Travis method. In the faster tempo numbers where this might not be possible, I've been inclined to use chords and arpeggios with percussive counterpoint on the soundboard.

I'm finding it tough to get going on some days; there's such a lot of material to cover that it takes ages for things to come together. A sense of decision paralysis seems to like lurking nearby. But four months plus and this guitar-player wannabe's still at it - with all the songs in place albeit in various states of repair. Overall it's been a summer well spent.

This process has been just as valuable to me as an educator. Why am I succeeding this time when I didn't in the past? Is it in having spent the time establishing the final context? I think so, as now, every practice has a setting, every success is perceivable, every advancement makes clearer the way ahead.

Mosts of all, the guitar has taught me not to be greedy. To recognise that in order to achieve success, one needs to be brave enough to say "no" to those seductive "really nice to have but not at all essential" things; and to recognise them in their different guises.

Obtaining early results is a cornerstone of effective teaching, and learning to play this instrument has revived my understanding of its significance.

Yeo Loo Yen

The Spanish Half

Sometimes one just has to bit the bullet and get on with it.

The revamp of the website in Spanish has at last started. A few months ago I restructured the salsa website in English; to reflect accurately its position relative to the local organisations, and to maintain its continued relevance worldwide. I'd been delaying doing the same for the Spanish version - www.salsa-merengue.net for just one reason; I'm not the one doing the translating.

That task's been taken up by the embarrasingly talented Ana Santiago Menendez: educator, singer-songwriter, dancer, bajista, and gold-panner extrordinaire (Yep, you read that bit right). I suspect she didn't know what she was volunteering for, otherwise it'd still be only a monolingual site. I wanted to make sure that the new structures were bedded down properly in the English version, so that there wouldn't be any extraneous work due to a lack of organisation on my part.

Having worked with Ana in songwriting for the band before, I can very much appreciate the vast amount of work needed to get the message right. We're still looking for accurate translations for "close hold" and "bugbear".

Perhaps there's a hint of cultural pride; it doesn't do to have a top salsa site in English and not in Spanish. That might nark one's sensibilities. Thank God cultural pride doesn't extend to my wanting to translate it into Chinese.

I wonder what "close hold" is in hokkien?

Loo Yen Yeo

Doing something right

It's an open secret that 4 de Diciembre and its previous incarnations of Grupo 271 and Chévere have been in the recording studios, on and off, for the past three years. In that time we've amassed a veritable mountain of material, some of it truly inspirational. Sadly a good proportion of it will never see the light of day, because of some inherent flaws that render it unsuitable for release.

I put those down as much to our then level of inexperience, as well as a recording studio that was not, I feel, particularly sympathetic to the needs of a Latin band. But we are lucky in that now, we have in our midst an experienced recording engineer in the shape of Dan.

A few months ago, we decided to take the step and do the recordings ourselves.

The proposition of getting us all, a large-ish Latin ensemble on tape isn't a small matter. That's part of the reason for my writing hiatus; I've been busy planning with Dan our recording strategy, our equipment needs, getting it sourced and making it happen. The last pieces of the jigsaw: the recording desk, remaining microphones, connectors, gates and compressors, will be arriving within the next couple of weeks. Once it's all hooked up to the stuff we've already got, we'll be good to start.

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this with a strange melange of anticipation and trepidation. For me, it remains the final and best opportunity to have our hard work, character and creativity rendered in a lasting manner - to hold in our hands a permanent token of an exceptionally rewarding period of our lives.

We actually have enough material for at least two albums, and we've elected to go for the greater challenge of having our first release comprising solely original material. We're not "easy route" kind of people.

Watch this space.

Loo