Cuban Timba Piano: Style, Creativity and Power

Style, Creativity and Power in Cuban Timba Piano
Ph.D. Dissertation Prospectus
By Orlando Enrique Fiol
University Of Pennsylvania: School of Arts and Sciences
Department Of Music
Dissertation Advisor: Peter Manuel
Submitted: July 26, 2011

Introduction
Since the early 1990s, Cuba has developed a popular dance music genre known as timba.
Influenced by structures, instrumentation and song forms from earlier Cuban folkloric and
popular genres such as rumba, son, changüí, danzón, son montuno, mambo, guaracha,
chachachá, songo and international salsa, timba also incorporates select elements from North
American and Afro-Diasporic traditions. Focusing on the piano’s role within the timba rhythm
section, I trace the development of pianistic gestural and textural vocabularies, exploring how the
piano’s ensemble role interrelates with those of bass, percussion, horns and vocals, through a
genre-based historicized lens.
On a macro level, timba piano traffics in deeply rooted, ethnically and racially charge musical
symbols of Cuban cultural patrimony, each rich with sonic historicity. Yet, on a micro level,
timba piano attempts to balance its inherited tradition with cosmopolitanism, genre
consciousness, cyclicity, repetition, controlled improvisation, timbral combination and structural
intensity. I explore how timba piano’s macro and micro-level gestural developments dovetail
with globalized musical values shared by Afro-Diasporic and popular musics through a number
of frames informed by music theory, ethnomusicology and cognitive studies.
Whereas much recent timba scholarship, (Neustadt 2002; Cano 2004, 2005; Perna 2005;
Froelicher 2006; Moore 2006; Hernandez-Reguant 2008), ties the genre to expressions of
black pride in socialist Cuba, I instead contextualize timba piano’s position within three
broad periods in Cuban music history: internal modernization, (1900-1959), relative
isolation, (1960-1980) and transnational dialogue, (1990-present) Each of these periods

has left behind vestiges of shifting musical thought in terms of harmonic, rhythmic and
textural approaches to Cuban pianism in ensemble popular music.
Behind the textual topoi of timba lyrics as social commentary, beneath shifting
professional relationships between bandleaders and pianists, and beyond the limits of
internationally accepted norms surrounding Latin American popular music, timba pianists
provide much more than ornate harmonic and rhythmic accompaniments to vocal
improvisations and horn mambos. Challenging the notions of repetition, cyclicity and
narrativity, timba pianists create garlands of variable modular ostinati that respond to
unfolding structural changes in the timba arrangement. These ostinati, or tumbaos,
constitute a vital locus of power, as specific stylistic features become part of each band’s
sello, (signature sound), obliging pianists to interact with each other’s historical legacies
as they join or leave bands.
Often leaving Cuba for greater economic opportunities and musical diversity, timba
pianists eventually confront the reality that their creativity must now fulfill different
musical functions in non-timba contexts than it does in Cuba’s top tier bands. Often for
pragmatic concerns, timba pianists’ shifting senses of genre-based musical history and
performative parameters must interact with non-Cuban contexts in which divergent
aesthetic values shape the piano’s ensemble roles. Many of these alternate pianistic
aesthetics are shaped by international sociocultural forces and commercial concerns.
Timba’s take on folkloric traditions, Western classical music and North American styles
in turn pushes back against those forces, informing sonic negotiations. I analyze the tenor

and scope of these negotiations, chronicling timba pianists’ efforts at self reinvention as
they struggle to forge satisfying careers outside Cuba. I explore Cuban pianists’ musical
strategies in the application of timba techniques to the broad-based musical worlds of
Latin jazz, international salsa and world musics. These efforts at recontextualization thus
demand codification approaches to timba piano pedagogy, which I contrast with Cuba’s
conservatory system.
Methodology
Four types of primary source data will be collected and statistically analyzed:
(1) interviews with timba songwriters, arrangers, musicians, record producers, dancers
and enthusiasts
(2) studio and live recordings of timba, previous popular genres and international salsa, as well
as selected jazz, African and Brazilian musics cited by musicians as influences
(3) written arrangements and notated audio transcriptions of piano performances, often by timba
pianists themselves
From scholarly literature:
(1) Ethnomusicology: ethnographic monographs and oral histories pertaining to timba, historical
Cuban popular music genres and international salsa
(2) Theory: analytical techniques regarding approaches to rhythm/meter, melody, chromatic and
diatonic harmony, chordal accompaniment, arranging and improvisation

(3) Cognition/Perception: crosscultural studies on entrainment, melodic contour, macro and micro
formal perception, sound studies, timbral phenomenology, relationship between brain function
and pitch class perception
All these data will be filtered through my life-long experiences as a pianist/percussionist playing,
teaching, recording, composing and arranging Cuban folkloric and popular musics (including
timba), often alongside Cuban colleagues. Having developed acknowledged authentic
performative and creative skills within this tradition, I can ask meaningful questions regarding
creative and performative processes. Moreover, although I am Hispanic/Italian, I am not Cuban,
and my Latin music education was initially forged through a participatory apprenticeship in my
father, Henry Fiol’s, selectively Cubaphilic international salsa career. I therefore occupy a
potentially fruitful, if precarious, position straddling timba and salsa. This dissertation therefore
constitutes a triangular analytical dialogue between my personal experiences, theories informed
by scholarly paradigms and the actual ideas of timba and international salsa pianists.
Part I: Conceptual Roots
Like many other Afro-Diasporic musical traditions, Cuban popular musics have been historically
analyzed as amalgamations between African rhythm and European melody/harmony. While this
enduring bifurcation accounts for many of Cuba’s musical ingredients and developmental
processes, I instead suggest a more inclusive analytical paradigm in which the West African
contribution is not purely rhythmic and the Iberian contribution is not purely melodic/harmonic. I
argue that virtually every extant element of Cuban popular music, from instruments and

ensemble roles to compositional and improvisatory aesthetics, contains creolized conceptual
underpinnings, culled primarily from West African and Iberian sources, that directly influence
timba piano’s prehistory and current gestural vocabulary.
Aspects of West African musicality have left indelible marks on Cuba’s folkloric and popular
musics, (Sublette 2004; García 2006). These include: the clave concept in rhythm, preponderant
pentatonicism in melody, jazz/blues harmonies and conversational ensemble paradigms.
Moreover, timba piano could not exist without the technical, textural, conceptual and gestural
materials drawn from Western classical music. The creolized hybridities between European and
West African elements ae not coincidental or purely pragmatic; rather, they exemplify
conceptual convergences between similar approaches to melody, modality, rhythmic
organization and ensemble performance aesthetics.
Chapter 1: West African Roots
Paul Gilroy’s “black Atlantic” paradigm, (Gilroy 1991), clarifies the pervasive influence of West
African musical retentions on Afro-Diasporic musics, (Cancado 2000; Monson 1999, 2000;
Radano and Bohlman 2000; Brennan 2008). This chapter traces the Cubanization of various
West African approaches to metrical and melodic organization: time-line patterns, polymeter,
syncopation, irregular periodicity, rhythmic counterpoint, call-and-response structures,
controlled improvisation and melodic modality. For many African scholars, these attributes
embody the musical expression of generalized West African cultural values: an emphasis on
community, fluidity of sacred/secular demarcation, rote dissemination and the interweaving of
music and dance (Chernoff 1979; Kauffman 1980; 1982; Koetting 1986; Agawu 2003; Collins

2004). Cuban popular pianists have historically manipulated many seminal West African
approaches to metrical organization and pendular cyclicity in the construction of tumbaos,
soloing matrixes and chordal accompanimental formulae.
1.1: West African Metrical Organization and the Cuban Clave
Scholarly discussions of metrical organization in West African music often focus on cyclical
time-line bell patterns, polymeter, interlocking supporting drum parts and periodicity in lead
drum improvisation, (Agawu 2003). Based on Rebecca Sager’s and Mario Ray’s taxonomies of
cinquillo and tresillo patterns, as well as my 2007 essay “Hidden Rhythm: Clave In West
African Music,” I suggest that most West African time-line patterns display structures that
became codified and systematized into syncopated and unsyncopated halves within the Cuban
clave concept.
1.3: The Clave Concept
Cuba’s twentieth-century popular music traditions, of which timba is a part, revolve around a
central creolized clave concept. Clave, a Spanish word meaning key or code, is a non-
isochronous, asymmetrical rhythmic pattern dividing eight pulses into five unevenly spaced
attacks. (Washburne 1997; Butler 2004: 85) The clave pattern not only functions on a literal level
as a time-line, but more importantly serves as a rhythmic guide for the organization of metrical
pulse, syncopation, tension/release perception and hypermetrical cycles. Clave orientation also
governs non-rhythmic musical features such as melodic cadence and harmonic periodicity.

1.4: Ternary and Binary Clave Patterns
The literal clave pattern is most often played on a pair of wooden sticks or clapped; in
folkloric contexts, various clave patterns are played on a hoe blade, cowbell or rattle. Timba
percussionists play the clave pattern using a wooden or plastic jam block. The precursor to
Cuba’s binary clave is the ubiquitous 12/8 bembé time-line found in Ewe, Ashanti, Yoruba and
Dahomey ceremonial and dance rhythms. This bembé bell time-line consists of seven
asymmetrically divided pulses characterized by David Peñalosa as the onbeat and offbeat triple
groups, (Peñalosa 2010: 66-68). The onbeat triple group’s first pulse coincides with the cyclical
beginning, while the cycle’s second half contains identically saced pulses delayed by the density
referent, (London 2004: 68). When the 12/8 bell is fitted against four equally spaced pulses,
rendering it a triplet figure in two 2/4 measures or one 4/4 measure, a 3-against-2 polyrhythmic
space is available for exploration. By shifting the triplets to eighths or sixteenths, this same 12/8
bembé bell becomes purely binary, giving rise to the most common binary claves in Cuban
music: son and rumba.
Son and rumba claves differ in the position of their third pulses. Son clave’s third
pulse is called the ponche by Latino and non-Latino musicians outside of Cuba. It gives rise to
the anticipated bass pattern found throughout Cuban-influenced Latin American popular genres,
(Manuel 1985). This pattern consists of a two-note cell comprising 3-2 son clave’s second and
third pulses. Moreover, Cuban musicians have repeatedly told me that they never encountered
names for these pulses before leaving Cuba, (Castellanos and Zayas 2011: personal

communication). Master Cuban pianist César “Pupy” Pedroso, founding member of Los Van
Van and leader of his group Los Que Son Son, divides all piano tumbaos into two categories
differentiated by the placement of harmonic events, (Moore, Kevin 2011: personal
communication). This taxonomy implies that piano tumbaos fit either against son or rumba
clave, their harmonic phrases changing according to each clave’s third pulse.
1.5: Clave Notation, Hypermeter and Periodicity
By relating the West African-derived clave to Western classical tactus-based metrical theory, the
Cuban clave is a truly Creolized entity—neither entirely West African nor European in origin. In
Fernando Ortiz’s transcriptions of Lukumí batá rhythms, (found in La Africanía En La Música
Cubana), binary clave is notated in two measures of 2/4 with the sixteenth note as the N-cycle.
Beginning in the 1940s, clave in the United States was most often notated in two measures of 4/4
with the eighth note as the N-cycle because it was easier for jazz musicians to sight-read. In
Cuba, clave is often notated in a single 4/4 measure The choice of 2/4, 4/4 or cut time represents
the tactus level against which the clave functions.
1.6: The Great Clave Shift
As rhythmic patterns and melodic phrases are aligned with the clave, it becomes necessary to
distinguish between clave-neutral, clave-aligned and contra-clave phrases. Clave-neutral patterns
repeat on both halves of the clave; examples include the standard conga marcha, bombo-ponche
bass and güiro or cencerro patterns. Clave-aligned patterns’ accentuations follow those of the

clave’s 3 and 2 sides. Contra-clave patterns reverse the accentuation, shifting the clave-alignment
to the opposite side. Until the 1920s, most Cuban popular genres including son, danzón and
guaracha employed clave-neutral and clave-aligned patterns. But by the early 1930s, recordings
of Cuban son, danzón and guaracha began placing downbeats and harmonic phrases on the
clave’s 2-side rather than its 3-side.
1.7: Contra-Clave and Clave Cruzada
The great clave shift notwithstanding, there are still standards for the alignment of music and
clave; phrases outlining the tresillo are placed on the 3-side, while phrases outlining duple
subdivisions of the tactus are placed on the 2-side. However, there remains an enduring sense
that certain relationships between clave and music are indeed contra-clave, (literally: against the
clave). Los Van Van’s “Sandunguera,” (1983), or “Te Pone La Cabeza Mala,” (1997) are typical
examples.
There is some overlap between the terms contra-clave and clave cruzada, (literally: crossed
clave). The former is laudatory while the latter is pejorative. Contra-clave connotes intentional
subversion or manipulation of clave directionality’s rules in order to achieve the unexpected.
Clave cruzada implies ignorance regarding proper clave directionality and most often refers to
sectional divisions “flipping” or “jumping” the same clave.
1.8: Clave Montada and Clave Brincada

Cuba and its musical diaspora generally adhere to the dictum that the clave’s 3 and 2-sides must
alternate consistently from beginning to end of a piece. When sections of a song or arrangement
change clave direction while maintaining a consistent clave alternation, this is known as clave
montada, (“mounted” or “flipped” clave). However, there is also a tradition known as clave
brincada, (“jumped clave”), in which the alternation of 3 and 2 sides of the clave is broken by
musical necessity or aesthetic agency.
The practices of flipping versus jumping clave are curiously intertwined. When clave
directionality is flipped, its orientation toward the music remains constant, while extra measures
are added to flip the music’s cyclicity. Although clave jumping may have arisen from frustration
with the need to add these extra measures, something else might be at work. Certain timba songs
such as Manolín González’s “Ahora Baila” and Los Van Van’s “Agua,” contain seemingly
unnecessary clave jumps in which there may be an aesthetic preference for the dramatic effect of
added measures challenging the clave’s regular duple alternation. The practices of flipping
versus jumping clave may make musicians, listeners and dancers wonder “who’s in charge,” the
clave concept or the music surrounding it. The persistence of clave-neutral and otherwise
ambiguous rhythmic periodicity in timba and other genres plays with audience expectations
regarding clave flips and jumps.
1.9: Timba, Clave and Entrainment
Timba’s metricity is neither “en clave” nor “contra clave”; rather, it is counterpointed
clave. Most downbeats and sectional divisions are placed on the 2-side. However, phrases
can simultaneously begin or end on the clave’s 3-side. Piano tumbaos further complicate

this metricity by combining contra-clave with displacement and superimposed
microrhythms of 3, 5 or 7 N-cycles.
Timba musicians, dancers and audiences may therefore embody Justin London’s “Many
Meters” hypothesis. (London 2004: 142-168) For London, listeners familiar with many
musical genres hone their senses of normativity and deviation in accordance with each
genre’s micro and macro meters, isochronous and non-isochronous patterns, cross
rhythms, polyrhythms and syncopations. Recognizing timba’s historical genres, timberos,
simultaneously entraining to the clave pattern, multiple-clave cycles, smaller clave-
neutral and odd-metered cross rhythms, can switch among these metrical perceptions
within sections of the same song, depending on which musical elements demand auditory
focus. Dancers and musicians differently perceive timba’s multiplicity of perceptual
auditory demands. Shifts in focus from the percussion, bass, vocals, horns or piano in a
timba experience imbue it with different emotional intensities and empirical
complexities.
Chapter 2:Art Music, Polytonality and Pendular Tonality
Western art music, first brought to Cuba with Spanish colonialism, has constituted a conceptual
bedrock governing harmonic instrument performance, notation, compositional forms, diatonic
monody and chromatic harmony. Rigorously taught in Cuba’s conservatories, classical repertoire
partially shapes compositional and improvisational vocabularies by providing the timba pianist
with raw materials that I divide into gestures and textures. Gestures comprise: motivic
development strategies, melodic shapes, contrapuntal formulae, harmonic progressions and other
compositional devices that can be applied to different contexts. Textures, on the other hand, are
purely pianistic; they include: scalar and chromatic runs, arpeggios, interlocking octaves, double
third and double sixth passagework, cambiata figures, melodic figurations, parallel chord
plaining, among others, (Gerig 1974; Ferguson 1975; Eigeldinger 1986, 2000; Hamilton 2008).
During their conservatory training, timba pianists first gain exposure to the canonical Western
classical repertoire as well as the nineteenth and twentieth-century Cuban classical repertories
that first grappled with West African-based rhythmic and melodic cells. Through this repertoire,

timba pianists imbibe large-scale principles of musical narrativity and phrase structure, (Almén
2003). In my interviews with contemporary Cuban timba pianists, I shall attempt to ssess the
importance of Western and Cuban classical music’s gestural, technical and textural vocabularies
to timba piano.
2.1: Afrocubanismo, Generative Rhythmic Cells and Notation
Cuban musicologist Alejo Carpentier (1947) notes that early examples of Cuban classical music
composition adhered to Iberian and continental European models. However, beginning in the
19th
century and stretching into the 20th
-century Afrocubanismo movement, the works of Ignacio
Cervantes, Alejandro García Caturla, Amadeo Roldán, Ernesto Lecuona and others clearly
incorporated indigenous rhythmic and melodic cells. These indigenous incorporations were often
augmented by combinations of African pentatonicism with Western classical major/minor
tonality, added harmony and modality, (Lezcano 1991; Ray 2006). Moreover, the rhythmic cells
employed by Creole Cuban composers to impart stylized blackness are themselves
simplifications of the large-scale improvisation and variation phrases that convey the essence of
various folkloric genres. The Afrocubanismo movement nonetheless provided a fundamental
notational template used to this day by popular musicians who imaginatively notate phrases far
beyond generative cinquillo and tresillo patterns.
2.2: Polytonality

The interaction between West African and Iberian elements within Cuba’s musical world has not
been restricted to Afrocubanismo art music; it has also taken place within popular genres
(Manuel 2002, 2004).
As pentatonic and modal vestiges of West African melody interact with European
harmonic teleology, (Hughes 2004), a pervasive form of polytonality emerges that is quite
different from the 20th
-century experiments of Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky or Aaron
Copland, for whom polytonality’s charm resides in the juxtaposition of major or minor keys
sharing few or no common pitches. It is also different from the polytonality arising from
tonalities built on symmetrical octave divisions such as Olivier Messiaen’s modes of limited
transposition or Alexander Scriabin’s extensive use of the octatonic pitch class, (Messiaen 1943;
Reise 1983; Perle 1984; Parker 2011). Polytonality in Cuban art and popular musics instead
relies on a network of shared rotationally cyclical pentatonic, hexatonic and heptatonic pitch
collections, meeting within harmonic rubrics, yet diverging as modal and tonal, melodic and
harmonic, implications pull the music in different directions. This polytonality assumes various
forms, usually containing diatonic or chromatic chordal plaining or contrary motion contrapuntal
harmonizations of folkloric melodies.
In Arsenio Rodríguez’s lamentos afrocubanos, pentatonic melodies interact with
tonally functional and chromatic triadic harmonies, often using symmetrical octave divisions
such as the whole-tone or octatonic scales. In the 1940s mambos of Bebo Valdés and Dámaso
Pérez Prado, West African-derived Mixolydian and pentatonic melodies are set against extended
chromatic jazz harmonies using added ninth, eleventh and thirteenth chords. Today, timba coros
and horn moñas often rely on a variegated mixture of folklore and nursery rhymes, in

combination with harmonic gestures from U.S. fusion jazz, gospel and funk. Timba piano
tumbaos set these sometimes simplistic melodic refrains against elaborate jazz-inflected
harmonizations, creating deliberate polytonality.
3.3: Pendular Tonality, Rotational Equivalence and Musical Travel
In his 2007 paper “Tonalidad, Tradición, y el Sabor del Son Cubano,” Peter Manuel analyzes
selected Arsenio Rodríguez compositions in terms of dual harmonic tonicity and tonal/modal
ambiguity, suggesting that Cuban music’s preoccupation with pendular tonality may have its
roots in 18th
-century Spanish fandangos and chaconas. In my close analysis of Cuban popular
music harmony, I find that recurring harmonic progressions can be grouped by rotational
equivalencies analogous to rotationally equivalent rhythmic cells. Particularly in montuno
sections, timba arrangements make use of rotationally displaced harmonic progressions, varying
them with diatonically and chromatically generated harmonic substitutions, song-specific coros,
mambos and gesturally rich piano tumbaos. Through patterns emerging from encyclopedic
statistical analysis of Cuban popular music progressions, I set forth a taxonomy of harmonic
progressions upon which song-specific timba piano and bass tumbaos are built. The rotational
symmetries between (1) rhythmic cells, (2) modal tonics, and (3) harmonic progressions serve as
vital conceptual links between Iberian, West African and Afro-Diasporic genres; they may also
constitute the sonic travel routes that have given rise to the musical mobility, hybridity and
fusion so characteristic of the African diaspora.
Chapter 3: Timba And Repetition

Like many of its popular progenitors, timba is built upon repetitive structures of varying
lengths: interlocking bass and percussion patterns, vocal refrains, harmonic progressions
and piano tumbaos, all of which may repeat either literally or with variations. Given the
erudition and musical aspirations of most timba pianists, bassists and arrangers, repetition
and cyclicity are often intentionally masked through elaborate strategies of controlled
improvisation and variation, rendering timba especially challenging for non-Cuban
listeners and dancers to appreciate and enjoy.
As Gregory Cushman documents, early 20th
-century Cuban musicologists such as
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes developed race-based musical genre taxonomies with anti-
African biases tying repetition frequency to other perceived rudimentary structures,
(Cushman 2005: 171-172). Repetition was also associated with rural backwardness
exemplified by genres such as changüí and early son oriental, in contrast to Creolized
European derived narrative genres such as danzón and bolero. (Moore 2006; Perna 2005)
Repetition was often the scapegoat for racially charged critiques of Afro-Cubans’
supposed impulsivity by white Cuban classical composers and musicologists favoring
Western music’s narrative aesthetics and mistrusting repetition’s hypnotic powers. Even
today, strictly classical Cuban musicians have intimated to me that they consider groove-
based popular musics to be based on too few elements and contained too little progressive
motion.
The piano, being historically classical rather than folkloric or popular, with its own
repertoire and performative conventions, lies at the heart of Cuban popular music’s
repetition polemic. It is safe to say that a fundamental tenet of Cuban pianistic modernity
involves what Cuban musicians consider to be the evolution away from generic tumbaos
and toward song-specific guajeos. From 1940 to 1952, the prolific composer, tres
virtuoso and blind Cuban bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez nearly singlehandedly
developed son-montuno from son and a host of Congo-derived folkloric genres such as
palo, yuka and makuta. In an overt and authentic effort to Africanize Cuban popular
music, Arsenio based many of his compositions around repeating call-and-response
montunos rather than strophic introductory verses, (García 2006; Arroyo 2009). In order
to intensify contrapuntal intricacy, Arsenio expanded the instrumentation of the
prototypical sexteto/septeto by adding piano, multiple trumpets and the all-important
tumbadora, (conga drum). Rather than provide chordal accompaniment, as in danzón or
bolero, the piano and “singing bass” were pressed into interlocking service, most often
playing the types of song-specific tumbaos that would later form part of timba’s bedrock.
After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, 1960s and 1970s groups such as Los Van
Van and Irakere combined various melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements from
psychedelic rock and jazz with folkloric and popular Afro-Cuban rhythms. Seeking
alternatives to repetition, these groups also consciously minimized the time given over to
estribillos, preferring strophic cuerpos and numerous instrumental interludes. In much of
Los Van Van’s and Irakere’s early output, the estribillo almost became an afterthought;
songs were primarily identified by their temas rather than their estribillos. Again, pianists
such as Los Van Van’s César “Pupy” Pedroso and Irakere’s Jesús “Chucho” Valdés
augmented the piano’s gestural vocabulary from generic, harmonically simplistic

progressions to adventurous montunos combining traditional gestures and textures with a
jazzy cosmopolitan sensibility. In the early 1980s, when groups like Rumbavana and Son
14 revitalized older Cuban forms, partially as the Revolution’s answer to U.S. and Puerto
Rican salsa, Van Van’s music began incorporating more overt elements from son and
guaracha, including salsa’s characteristic bombo-ponche bass and many generic piano
tumbao patterns. Today, Los Van Van is considered by many Cubans to be timba; its
music incorporates timba’s stylizations of hip hop and funk, as well as folkloric elements
and bass/percussion gears. Yet, Pupy Pedroso’s pianistic legacy, now carried on by
Roberto Carlos “Cucurucho” Valdés, while oft cited as a valuable antecedent to timba
piano, stops short of the gestural and textural variety characteristic of younger pianists’
tumbaos.
Given this brief overview of Cuban music’s contentious obsession with repetition, we can
now ask: what and how does timba repeat? Within the framework of Richard Middleton’s
concepts of musematic and discursive repetition, (Middleton 1983: 238), timba’s musical
structures pose interesting analytical problems. Since timba repeats on a multiplicity of
metrical levels, it becomes difficult to determine timba’s analogues to riffs, much less
quantify the structural importance of riffs in timba’s aesthetic appeal. In contrast to
earlier genres and international salsa, timba piano tumbaos are explicitly created to help
identify each song. Since timba’s harmonic progressions are often four to eight claves
long and since piano tumbaos display immense gestural variety, they do not function
temporally on the same scale as funk or rock riffs. The closest timba analogues to riffs in
rhythm and blues or rock and roll are vocal coros and horn mambos, many of which can
be laid out successively or layered over the same harmonic progression.
Piano, bass and synthesizer tumbaos function on the level of what Middleton
characterizes as “discursive repetition.” Moreover, timba superimposes short and long
discursive structures alternating with improvised or precomposed material. A short coro
lasting half a clave may be sung eight times over a four-clave progression. A four-clave
tumbao may be constructed over a single-clave progression by stringing together or
thematically relating four tumbao iterations.
Timba is therefore caught in a long-standing historical debate within Cuba’s
musicological community regarding race, class, nationalism and repetition. Spreading to
international Latin music communities, the intensifying repetition debate centers around
the characteristic patterns associated with musical genres. Cuban musicians generally
make only passing allusions to these patterns, believing that carefully chosen abstract
compositional and improvisational materials convey more of a genre’s essence than its
stockpile of basic patterns. For international musicians, however, these very generic
patterns constitute valuable markers of ethnic pride and musical identity in a crowded
marketplace.
Part II: Piano Style and the Timba Arrangement

Like many pre-timba genres such as son, son montuno, guaracha and mambo, timba
arrangements conform to four structural divisions: introducción, cuerpo, estribillo and
coda. The introducción consists of a tonally directed horn melody against which the
piano and bass, realizing lead sheet notation, play standard mambo or salsa tumbaos. This
piano/bass accompaniment formula also applies to the cuerpo section in which the lead
singer carries the song’s textual and musical melodic content. Strophic cuerpos are
interpolated with puente or bridge sections exploring distant keys and extended jazz
sonorities build upon additive sixth, seventh, ninth, eleventh and thirteenth chords.
Estribillo or montuno sections often open with a song-specific signature piano tumbao,
with the congas, timbales and bass dropping out to highlight it. Estribillos can also be
introduced with motivo, (unison or octave doubled), treatments of bass tumbaos, with
piano or synth doubling bass lines. Montuno sections alternate coros, (harmonized vocal
refrains), and guías, (precomposed lead vocal commentaries). Bridge sections or mambos,
(repeating horn figures), alternate with coro/guía sections in which bass/percussion gears
provide timba arrangements with climactic waves. New coros and mambos are often set
up by gear changes, during which piano tumbaos are either maintained, varied or
replaced with new ones. Although studio versions of many timba songs use fadeouts as
endings, composed codas, usually employing extensive unison breaks, are also used.
(Perna 2005: 109-126)
Chapter 4: Genres, Guajeo and Tumbao
Since timba is at once its own genre and an amalgamation of previous genres, this chapter
explores the influence of various genres on timba’s pianistic gestural and textural vocabulary.
The instrumentation associated with Cuban popular music’s three main ensemble types,
(conjunto, charanga and orquesta), have historically regulated pianistic use of registration, octave
displacement, syncopation and chromaticism. Timba piano unites stylistic features that pianists
still consciously associate with specific genres and ensemble types. Furthermore, the pragmatic
professional, political and institutional environment in which timba pianists work is predicated
on a hierarchical system of genre classification, (Robbins 1989). As timba pianists negotiate
shifting genre definitions into a working gestural and textural arsenal, it becomes paramount to
distinguish two Cuban terms governing montuno creation and performance: guajeo and tumbao.
Succinctly put, tumbaos are generally standard rhythmic cells played over a variety of harmonic

progressions and used across genres, while guajeos are song-specific, rhythmically and
melodically distinctive “riffs”.
4.1: Son
Cuban popular music can be said to beat with a son pulse. Based on rural trova santiaguera,
regina guantanamera, and urban stylized semiclassical pieces, (Manuel 2009), son standardizes
the canto-estribillo song format common to nearly all subsequent popular music genres including
timba. Son’s ensemble performance characteristics include son clave, anticipated or tresillo bass,
(Manuel 1985), syncopated tres montunos, (Lapidus 2008), harmonized coro and improvised
bongó, all of which carry over in to modern genres such as son-montuno, mambo, salsa and
timba, (García 2003).
Arsenio Rodríguez’s 1940s son-montuno expansions of tresillo-based patterns in to song-specific
guajeos, flanked by piano and acoustic “singing” bass, required pianists such as Rubén González
and Lilí Martínez to harmonize these bass lines in the piano’s middle register. But as Cuban
conjuntos such as Rumbavana or Casino dispensed with the tres, the pianist took a more active
role. The timba pianist therefore inherits what may be called tres style, chord arpeggiations
consisting of outer octave and inner chord tones, often augmented by two-voice countrapuntal
formulae between right and left hands. In keeping with the tres’ three string courses, extended
chords are often articulated using upper partials. Los Van Van’s founding pianist, César “Pupy”
Pedroso, expanded this tres style with contrary-motion arpeggios, chromatic and diatonic passing
tones.

4.2: Changüí
Changüí is a rural complex of genres including quiribá and nengón played in Cuba’s
eastern provinces, (Lapidus 2008). Although the changüí genre complex shares formal
and instrumentation characteristics with son, its rhythmic rubric is either clave-neutral or
almost entirely syncopated. As in son, the timba pianist inherits changüí tres style, but
with a different rhythmic orientation. In changüí tumbao style, largely syncopated
arpeggios, sometimes containing only a single downbeat, are articulated either with both
hands an octave apart or with the right hand in octaves and the left hand filling out the
middle register. By conceiving of tumbaos as containing principal and “filler” pitches,
timba pianists mitigate changüí style’s syncopations.
4.2.1: Nengón
Part of the changüí genre complex, nengón is entirely based on the clave-neutral 3+3+2
tresillo figure . Its harmony is invariably V-I or I-V. Nengón-derived compositions can
also be clavecized, as are Arsenio Rodríguez’s “Zumba” and Cuco Valoy’s “Juliana”.
While Arsenio’s “Zumba” supplements the clave-neutral nengón rhythmic pattern on the
3-side with a 2-side clavecized variant, Valoy’s “Juliana” transforms the nengón
harmonic progression into a memorable opening piano montuno. It is this nengón-drived
clave neutrality that often disorients international salsa fans when listening to or dancing
timba. Many traditionalists, including my father Henry Fiol, decry timba piano’s busy use
of left-hand filler notes in the service of right-hand clave neutral tumbaos, (Fiol 2009:
personal communication)
4.3: Rumba
Of Cuba’s many folkloric genres, rumba has exerted the most influence on popular
music. From rumba’s three genres: yambú, guaguancó and Columbia, the guaguancó
interlocking drum pattern is frequently quoted in salsa and timba; examples include Los
Van Van’s “De la Habana a Matanzas,” Elio Revé’ “Rumberos Latinoamericanos” or
Paulo FG’s “De La Habana”. Rumba’s opening vocal diana intonations form the basis of
Arsenio Rodríguez’s trumpet introductions to his guaguancós de salon, (García 2006). Its
drum conversations, (Crook 1982; Stover 2010), serve as templates for Los Van Van’s
songo and bassist Alain Pérez’s punchy timba bass parts, (Alain Pérez and Daniel
Lozada; online interviews). But most importantly, rumba clave, coros, supporting drum
conversations and lead drum improvisation matrixes continue to inspire timba coros,
mambos and piano tumbaos.
4.4: Chachachá
Innovated in the early 1950s by violinist/composer Enrique Horrín, chachachá is most
closely associated with the charanga ensemble type. Its violin guajeos, güiro, timbal
chacha bell and bass tumbaos reinforce a strictly duple taktus. Harmonically, chachachá

progressions nearly invariably use jazz-based ii-V-I progressions. Pianistically, chachá
playing is almost entirely chordal, with the left hand playing staccato offbeats and the
right playing tenuto onbeats. With the left hand remaining syncopated, a number of right-
hand arpeggiated and dotted-note figures lend chachachá an enduring elegance. Today,
chachá piano tumbaos have been sufficiently sped up to serve as accompaniment
formulae for timba’s “charanga” sections in cuerpos or as muela breakdowns during
which the lead singer addresses the audience.
4.5: Bolero
Bolero is Latin America’s international art song. It is the genre most closely tied to 19th
-
century European melodic, harmonic and rhythmic aesthetics. Unlike most cyclical
Cuban folkloric and popular genres, boleros are purely strophic and thus narrative,
containing no repeating estribillo or montuno sections. Heavily influenced by Western
popular song and jazz, most boleros use the 32-bar standard Tin Pan Alley pop song
form, (Sabatella 2003). Given bolero’s international associations, it was an obvious
template for salsa romántica cuerpos based on the melodic contours and harmonic
progressions of bolero’s genre relative—balada. As 1990s Cuban timba sought a
selective reconciliation with salsa romántica, the balada-based cuerpo became and
remains a songwriting and arranging standard.
For the timba pianist so often required to play tumbaos, the jazz-style comping formulae
lifted from bolero offer opportunities to explore extended chord voicings and triplet-
based crossrhythms. This accompaniment style, harmonically though not rhythmically
related to jazz comping, is called ponchando. As an example, I analyze in detail the
cuerpo of Geraldo Piloto’s composition “Zorreando,” recorded by Klímax in 1997. I pay
particular attention to extended chromatic harmony, tonicization strategies, indirect
modulation and modal mixture.
Chapter 5: Overview of Pre-timba and Timba Piano Gestures, Textures and
Harmonic Progressions
As the previous chapter demonstrates, timba piano’s gestural vocabulary is built upon a
solid historical foundation, both in terms of the piano’s overall ensemble function and
genre-specific tumbao generation strategies. Today, although timba piano contains both
generic tumbao and song specific guajeo elements, all repeating piano vamps are called
tumbaos.
5.1: Gestures
The following is a partial list of common pre-timba pianistic gestures also used in
timba:
(1) Tres Style: single notes or octaves as main chord tones filled in with completed
arpeggios
“Arriba la Invasión” by Arcaño y sus Maravillas

(2) Chordal Style: imitating Afro-Cuban folkloric percussion patterns.
chachachá: “El Bodeguero” by Orquesta Aragón
Motivo Style: piano, bass and other montuno instruments in unison
“Espíritu Burlón” by Orquesta Aragón
5.2: Timba Piano
Timba piano amalgamates the composite contrapuntal effect of multiple-instrument
interlocking tumbaos/guajeos. Taking up every N-cycle pulse, timba piano tumbaos
hierarchically accent a tumbao’s important pitches and clave-dictated pulses through
right-hand octaves and left-hand doublings, spreading the hands apart by two octaves for
a more brilliant sound. Single notes, arpeggios and closer registral hand divisions signal
weaker metrical accents. Thus, the octave portions often constitute the tumbao’s main or
“speaking” notes, simulating the older guajeo’s syncopated melodicism.
5.3: Mixed Gesture Tumbaos
Mixed gesture tumbaos most easily distinguish Timba piano from its antecedents, in
which each tumbao comprises a single gesture taken through the montuno’s chords. With
the advent of longer harmonic progressions, single gesture tumbaos rapidly bored
pianists, ushering in an aesthetic predilection for multiple gestures and periodicities
cutting across beats and barlines. These gestures include tres and chordal styles, repeated
octave anacrusies, arpeggiated grace notes, manual contrapuntal independence and
guajeo-like melodic fragments.

5.4: Varied Repetition
Whereas Cuban pianism previously cultivated the discipline of literal repetition, timba
piano encourages varied repetition. Strings of tumbao variations push discursive
repetition to its limits. Variation strategies include: rhythmic doubling, replacement of
consequent phrases, harmonic substitutions, motivic compression and displacement,
diatonic and chromatic passing tone decoration polyrhythm and gestural saturation. In a
string of timba tumbaos over a repeating harmonic progression, motivic relationships
expand, contract and rupture.
5.5: Harmonic Progressions
Timba piano navigates far more complex harmonic progressions than its forebearers.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, although the strophic narrative elements in popular song
grew longer and more harmonically adventurous, montunos tended to remain
harmonically sparse two to four-chord vamps articulated over one to two claves.
Typical harmonic progressions included: V-I in major and minor, VII I in Mixolydian,
circle of fifths progressions, etc. Rather than the functional triadic progressions common
to son, son-montuno and guaracha, timba progressions generally include jazz-based
tritone substitutions, secondary ii-V approaches to functional triads as well as extended
sonorities using augmented, ninth, eleventh and thirteenth chords. Nonfunctional triadic
progressions, imitating late-1960s psychedelic rock, began appearing on Los Van Van’s
first six albums, forming songo’s emerging harmonic sello. However, songo’s connection
to psychedelic rock has been supplanted by timba’s main harmonic progression
repository, 1970s American funk, pop and fusion jazz such as Grover Washington, Earth
Wind and Fire, the Yellow Jackets and Weather Report. For instance, the progression
from Grover Washington’s “Just The Two Of Us” forms the estribillo of Charanga
Habanera’s “El Blablabla” and Manolito Simonet’s “Llegó La Música Cubana,” among
many others.
5.6: Timba Piano's Mysterious Creative Explosion!
The preceding sections trace a seemingly logical progression from pre-
timba piano's gestures, textures and harmonies, to timba piano's expansions of
these. Yet, a listening juxtaposition of Son 14 from the 1980s and NG La Banda
or the original Charanga Habanera from the early 1990s suggests a cataclysmic
explosion, with sparklingly new pianistic gestures, textures and harmonies
springing forth, fully formed, and brimming with vitality. When asked about this
musical meteor, most of my Cuban musician colleagues have stressed precisely
the linear development chronicled above. Moreover, the music suggests that there
may be more to this intriguing tale, involving American popular musics and even
international salsa.
It is already well documented that Los Van Van and Irakere were highly
influenced by 1960s and 1970s psychedelia and fusion jazz, primarily in terms of
the bass, drum kit, electric guitar and vintage keyboards such as Farfisa organ and

Fender Rhodes. Furthermore, many Cuban musicians wax nostalgic about late-
1970s and early-1980s neighborhood parties in which local police were bribed to
stay away as crackling sound systems spewed forth the latest U.S. R-and-B
records by Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic,
Earth Wind and Fire, Cool and the Gang, Chaka Khan, Mtume, and others. Much
of this disco and funk is directly quoted in various ways in timba arrangements;
examples include Earth Wind and Fire's "Romance in the Stone" and the ever-
popular Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry". The interlocking clavinette, guitar
and bass parts on funk records may have served as prototypes for both the
rhythmic and registral relationships between piano and bass, as well as the
interlocking relationships between the piano's right and left hands. Timba's
bass/percussion gears, (discussed below), may have been influenced by the
breakbeat dropouts on funk records in which vocals and percussion are soloed.
Furthermore, the typical timba horn section functions more like an R-and-B unit
than those of traditional Cuban big band and small combos. There is also the
incorporation of blue notes and bluesy phrases into piano tumbaos, augmenting
the existing gestural vocabulary of chord arpeggiations and diatonic/chromatic
embelishment.
Since timba and international salsa are based on many of the same
structural and sonic raw merials, their developmental trajectories are inexorably
linked. Throughout te late 1970s and 1980s, Cubans were exposed to salsa hits, as
evinced by frequent vocal quotations of salsa songs. The Venezuelan
vocalist/bassist Oscar de León’s now legendary 1983 Havana perfmance renewed
Cuban interest in its historical musical patrimony. Y, Cuban musicians have
always felt a need to stay ahead of salsa rather than follow It may be this impulse
towards innovation that has spurred timba pianists and bassists to create tumbaos
that transcend what they hear as salsa clichés, even though those same clichés
became characteristic of salsa via Cuba’s musical patrimony.
I intend to probe all these questions in my fieldwork, attempting to piece
together the minutia of timba piano development during its crucial early years and
to provide timba pianists a forum in which to explicate their relationships to the
aforementioned external musical forces.
Chapter 6: Timba Piano and Bass/Percussion Gears
The underlying groove of any piece of Cuban dance music is known as a marcha,
consisting of generic patterns or song specific parts for percussion, piano and bass. Until
the 1980s, marchas were only broken by different sections of arrangements, precomposed
or collectively improvised breaks and instrumental solo sections. This remains the salsa
prototype. But by the early 1990s, Cuban rhythm sections had begun experimenting with
modular gear sections in which traditional marcha patterns were replaced by efectos,
(rhythmic punctuations of vocal improvisations or horn mambos), ritmos, (alternative
rhythm marcha patterns), conversations or controlled improvisations called mecnáicas.

Signaled by hand gestures, these gear shifts transformed mono-dimensionally repeating
montunos into grooves with waves, creating performance arcs.
Responding to bass and percussion drop-outs, controlled improvisations or modular
marcha changes, timba pianists such as Iván Luis “Melón” González and Tirso Duarte
developed multi-gestured song specific tumbaos spanning more than the customary one
or two claves, deploying jazz-based harmonic substitution, Afro-Cuban folkloric
rhythmic fragments, displacement, syncopated clave play and cyclical incongruity. These
tumbaos are sufficiently varied and flexible to provide ideal musical support for sectional
waves spanning speech, song and dance, (Agawu 2009: 98). They are also texturally
flexible and thus open to different performative realizations depending on ensemble
texture or intensity. The same tumbaos can thus be articulated with different textural
treatments. For instance, during muela sections, wherein the lead singer banters with or
exhorts the audience, right-hand octaves can be reduced to single notes an octave or tenth
above the left hand. In bomba or despelote gears, repeated notes can intensify a tumbao’s
drive, while doubled parallel thirds can increase its dramatic effect.
6.1: Gears and Signature Sounds
This section takes as its point of inquiry the relationship between a band’s
bass/percussion gear system and its signature sound and attempts to situate the
timba pianist within this system In my interviews, I intend to get a concrete sense of
how bands develop generic or song-specific gear schemes, how these schemes are
implemented during rehearsals and to what extent the pianist participates in this
process. I also intend to ask timba pianists how interwoven their tumbaos are with a
bad’s gear system.
6.2: Changing Bands and Gear System
Here, I shall ask pianists how their coposiional and performance
styles changed upon leaving one band and joining another, how they were
brought up to speed with a new band’s gear system and which stylistic
features became imperative to adopt, adapt or reject.
Chapter 7: Sello: Signature Sound ad Hok
This chapter explores the various strategies employed by timba
pianists, within Cuba’s socioeconomic structures and institutions, to innovate
and/or perpetuate a sello, (signature sound). In Cuba’s upper echelon
ensembles where competition is fierce and pay is often substandard, timba
pianists’ nonetheless strive for recognition and validation via their tumbao
creations. In my interviews with musicians, I ask how timba tumbaos
eventually come to represent entire songs; I am interested in how timberos
theorize the development of tumbaos into sonic “hooks”.
7.1: Sello (signature sound)

Theodore Adorno’s critique of repetition in 1930s jazz and swing focuses on the dangers
of mass production and mechanization, pointing out the formulaic nature of Tin Pan
Alley song forms. For Adorno, the commercial “plugging” of different artists performing
iterations of the same song amounted to pseudo individuality. Like most groove-based
popular musics, many of Adorno’s criticisms have been leveled against timba by elder
Cubans and Puerto Rican salseros. Timba’s succession of rapped coros, recurring
harmonic progressions and bass/percussion gear schemes make many bands sound too
similar. Moreover, Cuba’s Socialist musical economy has been designed to minimize
genericism through mass production. From the training of musicians to the naming and
marketing of bands, Cuba’s music industry emphasizes the public perception of a
signature sound associated with each band. Even young fans can identify bands after a
few clave cycles, honing in on features such as rhythm section grooves and gears,
pianists’ attack, coro contours or horn mambos. Most top level timba pianists serially
play in multiple bands throughout their careers, ever searching for more equitable
treatment and creative opportunities. To do this, they must assimilate each band’s sello,
learning previous pianists’ tumbaos from recordings and live performances. Tethered by
both previous tumbaos and the actual keyboards on which they were performed by
previous pianists, new pianist band members are nonetheless expected to execute these
tumbaos nonlitterally, with significant extemporaneous or precomposed variations. They
are also expected to create tumbaos for new songs following the band’s sello. Through
these processes of pre-existing tumbao memorization, variation and new tumbao creation,
pianists leave behind testaments to a musical power with which bandleaders must reckon,
even after relationships sour. For many 1990s timba bands such as those of Issac Delgado
or Paulo FG, there could be no sello without piano tumbaos. These tumbaos, acting as
tangible and intangible musical commodities, empower pianists with negotiation leverage
and augment their prestige.
7.2: Timba and Hooks
Since the 1980s, a great deal of Western popular music scholarship has concerned itself
not only with sociocultural and textual phenomena, but also sonic analysis. Philip Tagg
and Randal Pembrook have developed classificatory taxonomies for melod, harmony,
timbre, vocal performance, studio production and other criteria, (Tagg 1982; Pembrook
1987). Much of this taxonomica analysis concerns the establishment of and departure
from culturally accepted musical patterns. For Gary Burns (1987), a song's hook is a
recurring portion of its text, melody, harmony, rhythm or timbral spectrum that is made
memorable. For Burns, a hook's memorability is predicated upon its departure from sets
of pre-existing patterns and thus constitutes a type of change taht he calls "modulation".
Further nuancing the definition of hooks, Don Traut (2005) points out the pitfalls of tying
a sense of hooks to recurring accentuation patterns. Although his examples are primarily
drawn from 1980s pop/rock, his insights strikingly apply even more forcefully to timba,
where the definition of hooks cannot be tied to typical clave-based accentuation patterns.
Leaving aside the possibility of hooks in timba being tied to topical text or catchy slang
phrases, we can now ask the question: What can a piano tumbao contain, making it an
acknowledged hook for an entire song?

In my own effort to provide timba with an analog to Philip Tagg's criteria, I offer the
following criteria for piano tumbaos as hooks in timba songs:
(1) Emphatic Isolation: The piano tumbao must be repeatedly set apart from the overall
texture by eliminating enough instruments to make it stand out.
(2) Unique Harmonic Progression: A tumbao has the best chance of becoming an
identifiable hook if it realizes an uncommon diatonic or chromatic harmonic progression,
taking advantage of culturally-based senses of expectation, implication and realization.
(3) Gestural Variety: Piano tumbaos consisting of many discrete gestures and textures
will naturally stand out from the norms of pre-timba or other timba tumbaos.
(4) Association with Coro or Rap: If timba tumbaos are consistently soloed and then tied
to specific sung or rapped vocal refrains, they eventually achieve hook status in the
absence of vocals.
These criteria are primarily based on my personal experiences playing and analyzing
timba. However, I intend to share them with Cuban colleagues in hopes of additional
criteria or further nuances being proposed. I also intend to ask both timba enthusiasts and
detractors whether certain memorable piano tumbaos indeed embody song hooks in their
estimation.
Part III: Timba In Dialogue
This part explores how the timba pianist is trained in Cuba’s
conservatory system, how musical aesthetics are developed and how those
aesthetics are challenged when timba pianists leave Cuba and are forced to
work within different musical contexts. For ethnically obvious reasons, I
focus on international salsa and Latin jazz as alternative musical contexts
for timba pianists, attempting to discover how well the timba aesthetic
meshes with competing musical and cultural values.
Chapter 8: Timba Piano Pedagogy
Based primarily on interviews with pianists, their families and
conservatory administrators, this chapter surveys the methods by which timba
pianists are trained inside Cuba’s conservatory system. I explore the roles of
compulsory folkloric and popular percussion, Western classical pianism, jazz
improvisation, harmony, solfeggio and counterpoint classes in the formation of a
timba aesthetic.
Chapter 9: Two Case Studies: Timba in Dialogue with
Salsa and Latin jazz
I have traced the sonic, structural and sociocultural areas in which timba
piano has distinguished itself vis-a-vis Cuba's rich musical history. I have also
explored Cuban socialist society's unique political and pedagogical characteristics
enabling timba pianists to achieve maximal stylistic originality, creativity and

even power. But what happens when timba pianists leave Cuba seeking greater
musical freedom of economic opportunity? Does timba ultimately help or hinder
their adaptability to other musical and sociocultural contexts?
9.1: Salsa
In a 1994 article, Lise Waxer critiques the idea that "Latin music" outside
of Cuba has been mainly framed as an outward unidirectional flow from Cuba.
She points out that even before the U.S. embargo, American artists and their
musical ideas consistently flowed back to Havana, putting it on par with New
York as co-spheres of musical influence. With improving relations between the
U.S. and Cuba since the 1990s, the situation Waxer chronicles from the 1930s
through the 1950s has been largely replicated. However, in order to understand
the volatile relationship between timba and salsa, the period from the 1960s
through the late 1980s deserves special focus.
Roberta Singer's 1983 study of New York's Conjunto Libre within the
context of neo-traditionalism and record collecting is an epoch I know well. After
years of being musically and economically sidelined, New York's contingent of
Cubaphile salseros, including my father, had finally achieved international
recognition. When Cuban musicians began arriving on the 1980 mariel boatlift,
they encountered a musical milieu in which they were no longer assumed to be
the bastions of cultural authenticity within their own traditions. I recall during the
late 1980s how Cubaphilic salsa musicians lamented the devolutionary turns
Cuban music had taken, critiquing excessively fast tempi, poor mixing, badly
tuned percussion, jarring harmonies and generic vocal phrasing. As Peter Manuel
(1994) discusses, Puerto Rican and Nuyorican musicians have long argued that
their alterations of Cuban genres have turned salsa into a unique form of pan-
Latino self expression. Thus, Cuban musicians confronted mainstream salsa
asserting stylistic individuation on one hand, as well as neo-Cuban traditionalism
distancing itself from modern Cuban music on the other. Some musicians
responded by adapting to salsa's stylistic features, while others aggressively
attempted to reassert primacy, at times arrogantly instructing New York, Puerto
Rican and other Latino musicians on the "correct" performance of Cuban genres.
In the 1990s, still other Cuban musicians elected to abandon the fray altogether,
finding cultural refuge in Latin jazz and world musics.
Although the initial strife regarding Cuba's relationship to international
salsa is largely resolved by now, certain striking points of contention endure, the
piano and bass tumbao matrixes being of greatest importance. While commercial
salsa now routinely incorporates timba-style percussion breakdowns, it never
showcases gesturally varied piano tumbaos, punchy bass thumps or alternate
percussion marchas. For commercial salsa innovators such as Sergio George and
José Lugo, timba's influence remains audible, though slightly muted and never
overtly verbalized. I intend to find out what may be at stake. Similarly, for
timberos inside and outside Cuba, there remains a place for salsa-style bass and

piano tumbaos, usually during song cuerpos or mambos. I intend to find out what
it is about timba's open-ended, largely improvised montuno sections that Cuban
musicians consider ill suited to the salsa matrix. Finally, I intend to ascertain why
most timba bands use both piano and teclado, (synthesized keyboards), while
most salsa bands still do not.
9.2: Latin Jazz
If salsa presents culturally contentious issues of patrimony, tradition and
innovation, Latin jazz presents expatriate Cuban musicians with different
problems. First, contemporary jazz harmonies, though largely triadic, are often
tonally nonfunctional, removing the potential glue of diatonic and chromatic
passing tones that make timba tumbaos so compelling. My experiments applying
timba tumbaos to dense jazz progressions suggests that it is difficult to connect
timba's gestures together coherently, as suspended and polytonal chords whizz by.
Nonetheless, former timberos such as Iván Luis "Melón" González have
reinvented themselves as jazz and Latin jazz pianists. I intend to ask how much of
their timba sensibilities were sacrificed to this endeavor.
Second, timba tumbaos, taking up every N-cycle of binary clave, restrict
the chromatically rich bebop-based jazz soloing vocabulary, (Berliner 1994).
Timba tumbaos therefore often sound too busy as viable jazz accompaniments.
One solution has been to eliminate many of the "filler" chord arpeggiation tones
common in timba tumbaos, playing instead in a more overtly sparse and
syncopated style. Another has involved the use of traditional salsa-style bombo-
ponche bass rather than the jagged and punchy bass ubiquitous to timba. But
perhaps the most convincing solution involves greater use of bolero-style chordal
accompaniment, originally intended for jazz harmony, but used in timba only
during cuerpos and mambos.
Whether a Cuban pianist tries to fit into a salsa context or finds creative
ways of adapting timba's stylistic features to Latin jazz, the resulting music and
cultural openness usually benefits all involved. Mainstream and Cubaphile
salseros have begun to realize that younger Cuban musicians did not in fact
depart from frozen musical roots; rather, their innovations formed part of a linear
evolution that at times incorporated more American musical elements than salsa
would allow. Latin jazz musicians are in turn realizing that harmonic concessions
to timba tumbaos might open up more exciting grooves than the prototypical ones
used for decades.
Chapter 10: Conclusion
As music theorists continue researching and analyzing non-Western traditional and
popular musics, terminologies and musical values often collide. Emic and etic concepts
compete with each other for analytical clarity and authenticity. Timba’s classically
trained musicians bridge the translation chasm between Afro-Diasporic and European

musical rubrics, hybridizing them into creolized, transculturally syncretic systems. The
story of timba piano thus spans an evolution from generic rhythmic cells and functionally
triadic harmonic progressions to song-specific tumbaos, dense chromatic harmony and
modular variation techniques. Timba pianists have felt compelled to augment their
instrument’s historical gestural and textural tumbao and soloing vocabularies with
elements from Afro-Cuban folklore, jazz, funk and Western classical techniques, creating
tumbaos that do more than rhythmically arpeggiate functional harmony. On a micro level,
timba piano’s rhythmic, harmonic and textural structural variety mirrors macro level
aspects of ensemble performance including vocal coro/soneo alternation, horn mambos
and bass/percussion gear schemes. Participating in a polyrhythmic clave-based web,
piano tumbaos withhold and fulfill rhythmic, harmonic and melodic expectations. Well
educated, curious, eclectic and virtuosic, timba pianists’ powerful contributions to bands’
signature sounds empower ordinary working musicians, writing them into musical
perpetuity.

Appendix A: Musical Analyses
Following are close analyses of three representative timba tumbaos. For each, harmonic
progressions and gestural types are examined in detail.
Example 1: “¿Por qué paró?” by Iván “Melón” González
This tumbao appears on Issac Delgado’s 1995 album El Año Que Viene. It epitomizes
pendular tonality, since it functions both in G Mixolydian and C major. Predominantly in
harmonized tres style, the tumbao showcases harmonic substitution as variation,
extending the original two-clave cycle to four claves. The last two bars are harmonic
substitutions for the opening two bars. In bar 1, beat 1, a chromatic motif is introduced in
octaves. In bar 2, beat 3, a suspension on D7 is arpeggiated and resolved, while the bar
concludes with repeated Es anticipating the relative minor substitution of the major tonic
in bar 3. Bar 3, beat 2, introduces a plagal dominant tonicization of C via F7, suggesting
blues tonality, before the D7 suspension concludes the tumbao, outlining the clave’s 3-
side.
Harmonically, notwithstanding pitches on the 3-side, only beat 3 in measures 3 and 4
contain actual chord roots in one or both hands; the rest are prolongations of previous
material. For instance, the first period in measure 1 extends from beat 2 through the first
eighth of beat 3, making the A and G on beat 3 function as passing tones to the upcoming
F. Similarly, the tumbao’s second period ranges from the second sixteenth of beat 4
through the second sixteenth of measure 2. Thus, there are seven sixteenths in the first
two periods. In measure 2, beat 3, the D on the expected downbeat is syncopated by a
sixteenth note, functioning as a pickup to the clave’s 3-side.The last of the repeated E’s
approaching measure 3 deny the clave’s 2-side its customary downbeat. In measure 3,
beats 1 and 2, the chordal figure on F 7 is a typical 2-side rhythmic trope. The tumbao
concludes with a ii-V to G, extending the D 7 sonority into subsequent repetitions.
Example 2: “Romeo y Julieta” by Eduardo “Chaka” Nápoles

This tumbao appears on Manolín González’s 1997 album De buena fe. Lasting two
claves, this tumbao’s autotelic harmonic progression is: VI7+9+13-V-i-IV7 in F minor.
Its alignment with rumba clave partially accounts for harmonic resolutions before
downbeats. In measure 1, the hands are no more than an eleventh apart, but this spread is
increased to two octaves in measure 2, dividing the tumbao into two textures. This
division is reinforced by measure 1 being in the rootless harmonized style popularized by
Sonora Ponceña pianist/arranger Papo Luca, and measure 2 in tres style. Rhythmically, a
number of micro level asymmetries occur. The D-flat 7 chord oscillates between outer
and inner rootless voicing’s. In changüí style, it rhythmically displaces the typical
isochronous bell or güiro pattern by a sixteenth. This pattern repeats four times before the
harmony and gesture changes on C 7. On the last two beats of measure 2 F-minor-7,
articulated as A-flat major, approaches B-flat-7 as a temporary i-V that fails to resolve to
E-flat.
Example 3: “Sube y baja” by Tirso Duarte

Recorded in 1999 by the newly reformed Charanga Habanera’s young pianist, arranger
and vocalist Tirso Duarte, This tumbao epitomizes the younger generation’s aesthetic of
gestural saturation. Parallel thirds, scalar passages and a daringly wide melodic leap at
the beginning make it expressively unique.
The tumbao’s cycle lasts two claves and contains the progression: I, IV, II, III, vi, V-sus
in A-flat major. In the pickup to measure 1 and conclusion of measure 4, melodicism
conveys a guajeo flavor. The opening gambit: B-flat, A-flat, E-flat, D-flat C, is an
uncommon melodic cell in Cuban popular music. The parallel thirds surrounding beat 2
of measure 1 are highly suitable for signature tumbaos. Tres style takes over from beat 4
of measure 1 through measure 2. In measure 3, the opening phrase’s consequent returns
in parallel thirds, as does measure 1’s A-flat major tenths arpeggio on beat 3 of measure
3. Measure 4 concludes with a filled-in mambo rhythmic cell and a scalar run returning to
the cyclical anacrusis.
This admittedly minuscule sample of timba piano nonetheless attests to the genre’s depth
and breadth. Although the gestural taxonomy presented here is temptingly consistent,
timba pianists claim many other influences including Afro-Cuban rhythms, fragments
from piano soloing vocabulary and brief quotations from Western classical pieces. The
timba pianist is hyper aware of each potential note’s position inside and outside binary
and ternary metrical grids, the clave, the tumbao’s hypermeasures and micro-level
diatonic rhythms.

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