Latin Tracks for April 2015

Song (iTunes)	Artist	Category	Origin
Mas Bajo – El Rey	Tito Puente	Cha-Cha	USA
Lindo Yambu – Leyendas De La Fania Vol III	Eddie Palmiere	Son-Montuno	USA
American Sueño	La Excelencia	Guajira*	USA
Regalito de Dios – La Vuelta al Mundo	Havana d’Primera	Timba	Cuba
Tu Loco Loco y Yo Tranquilo – La Herencia	Roberto Roena	Salsa	Puerto Rico
Las Nenas Lindas (Version Salsa)	Jowell y Randy	Salsaton	Puerto Rico
Quiero Estar Contigo – Single – Ivan Venot	Ivan Venot	Bachata	Italy
Me Enamore – Lo Mejor de Lo Mejor	Kiko Rodriguez	Bachata	Dominican Rep.
Ma meilleure amie – Ma meilleure amie – Single	Kaysha	Zouk	Zaire

*Depends who you ask (see link)

Recognizing Cha Cha and Son Montuno

In my last blog post I introduced the idea that some of the music that people like to dance cha-cha to is, musically speaking, not actually cha-cha.  In that post I highlighted the origins of cha-cha music and that of another genre commonly used for dancing cha-cha, son montuno.  In this post I am going to dig a little deeper into the musical differences between these two genres.  Now, I am not a musician so I’ve focused on musical traits that I think are relatively easy to understand and that the casual listener can identify.

Cha-Cha
I’ve included in this month’s play list a cha-cha by Tito Puente called Más Bajo.   A great track for dancing cha-cha and a great track for highlighting the musical characteristics I’m going to describe below.  If you really want to hear these traits in the music, I highly recommend getting a copy of the song and listening to it a few times with a pair of good headphones. Ok that said, let’s get to the details.

1. Cha-cha music does not typically make use of the clave rhythm.

2. Traditionally, cha-chas are always played in a major key (Más Bajo for example is in the key of C)

3. Cha-cha music features the standard conga tumbao pattern, which typically uses open strokes on beats “4 &”. This is also common in other Latin genres. However, in cha-cha music these beats would often be emphasized by additional instruments such as the piano, bass and possibly horns.

4. The basic pulse of cha-cha is double that of a Son Montuno. This rhythm is emphasized by a bell (campana) on the 8th notes (dancer’s count) and is potentially played by the timbalero (timables player)

5. In addition to the basic pulse mentioned above, another common rhythm found in cha-cha is the following one, which usually starts on the first beat of the bar.

   1. (1)daaaa – di daaaa – di di (1) daaaa – di daaaa – di di etc.

6. In cha-cha the piano often plays repeated short, simple passages of music (also known as vamps).

There you have it, 6 basic characteristics that you can listen for in a song to see if it’s cha-cha. Again, take a listen to the song I mentioned earlier, Más Bajo by Tito Puento, to see if you can identify any of those traits in the music.

Son Montuno
Let’s move on to son montuno.  For this discussion, as our point of reference we’re going to be listening to a song by Eddie Palmieri called Lindo Yambu.  Here are some of the characteristics that you are going to listen for.

1. Unlike cha-cha, son montuno makes use of the clave rhythm (either implicitly or explicitly).

2. The basic pulse of a son montuno is emphasized by a bell (campana) which tends to play beats 1, 3, 5, 7

3. You may hear the piano or bass or conga accenting the “4 &” beat, but not as much as in ChaCha. The default emphasis will be just on beat “4” (as is typical for son).

4. The dominant bell pattern, often played by the bongo player, goes something like this

   (1)daaa – dee – daaa – di di (1) daaa – di di – daaa – di di

5. The piano player will play a syncopated pattern during the montuno section of the song.  These can be quite elaborate piano riffs.

6. Like cha-cha, son montuno can be found in a variety of tempos – including tempos typically used for salsa dancing. So, as a point of clarification, the tempo of a song does not distinguish it as either cha-cha or son montuno.

Ok, now that you have the details take a listen to the Eddie Palmieri track I mentioned above and see if you can hear any of these is the song

There you have it, a few of the musical differences between cha-cha and son montuno.  But a warning, these differences are rough guidelines at best.  The fact is that they only seem to apply some of the time.  It would appear that musicians are not too concerned about paying attention to the rules that define a genre.  They may borrow elements from on style or another and end up with a composition that resembles cha-cha or son montuno.  They may even go as far as to label a song as one particular genre or another. Case in point, the song Llegó Miján by Tito Puente (which appeared in last month’s playlist) has in the lyrics repeated references to ‘cha-cha’ so you could easily be forgiven in thinking it was a cha-cha. However, in the track listing on at least one album where this song appears (Tito Puente’s Dance Mania), it has been classified as son montuno.  So the question is, does it really matter? Composers will write what ever the like and dancer will dance steps that best fit that music. At the end of the day, there is not right or wrong.  

One final note, much of the information I’ve presented in this post came from two sources.  One was  a multi-page thread over at SalsaForms.com where people were discussing the differences between cha-cha, son montuno and some other genres.  It is very entertaining and at times heated discussion that is worth reading if the topic interests you.  This other was this discussion over at the rec.music.afro-latin newsgroup.  

Questions, comments, requests? Send me an email

– clavecito