Cuba linda siempre te recordaré...
Been having a missing-Havana-moment the last few days. The streets, the music, the pretty boys ... Here is something that takes me right back there: Paulito y su Elite's La Admiradora, recorded at Casa de la Musica, Galiano, Centro Habana, at a "supermatinee" on June 5 earlier this year. I won't say much more or I might cry.


And for anyone who hasn't twigged yet (or those of you who don't spend copious amounts of their lives online), youtube is turning out to be a goldmine of timba clips - just type "timba" into the search bar (or click on the link in the list on the right). You'll get a few clips of guinea pigs and horses, but you'll also get a fair wack of amateur live timba from Europe and Cuba (a batch from from a Manolin gig just went up in the last week), live and lip-synched timba from Cuba TV, and even some instructive videos in musical technique for the supergeeks among us.

So Charlize Theron has gone to Cuba, the cradle of son, the birthplace of the rumba, the current residence of one of the most kickarse forms of music today, timba (to name just three), and made a film about ... a hip-hop group.

Excuse me for a moment.

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!!!

What is it with filmmakers' obsessions for documenting any musical Cuban style EXCEPT THE ONE THAT HAS DOMINATED THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF CUBANS (and some foreigners) FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS?

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

From the Buena Vista Social Club, to episodes of the travel shows Six Degrees and Lonely Planet to Charlize's East of Havana - all of these (and probably a good deal more) overlook timba in favour of son and hip-hop. The former is understandable (it was an innovative and extremely influential genre), if frustrating (how much more do you need to say about it?); while the latter is just baffling. For a start: it's a foreign style, being played in a country that has given birth to more unique styles of music than probably any other. Not only that, but when compared to the popularity of the music by groups such as Van Van, Paulito, Charanga Habanera etc, hip-hop is a mere blip on the sonic landscape.

Timba is exciting, breathtaking, elevating. A form so sophisticated, spirited and well-played it leaves most almost all other contemporary music for dead. Not only that: but it is also a pop music - one that is inextricably linked to, fuelled by and loved by the people. There is no other pop music in existence that has all these attributes.

And yet these people, these outsiders, go there and, what? Look no further than people who can speak their own language (hip-hoppers, who are more likely to speak English than timberos, who mostly speak only Spanish)? Need to find a music they have already heard before in order to relate to it? Only want to concentrate on a romantic version of the past (in the case of son)?

Again I say:

Aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Fuckin' drives me nuts.

I can think of only two films that deal with timba. One is La Tropical. And actually I haven't seen it, cause the two times it screened in Sydney I had to work. I guess it's more about the dancers and the venue, but I'm assuming timba is the backdrop for it. Unless they spent all their time filming at the Sunday afternoon son sessions (jaja). [There is a clip at youtube with a soundtrack that starts with ... hip-hop, but then goes into charanga.]


The other is Jennifer Paz's Popular, which deals not only with the genre, but also the popularity and relevance of it to Cubans today. Unfortunately the band at its heart is Charanga Habanera - unfortunate for me, cause the last album of theirs I have any time for is Charanguero Mayor (2000). Those singers (that's Aned and Eblis, who has now left, on the right) give me the willies.

But I digress: good on her for going to the heart of the matter and documenting something that is actually relevant and real. [Watch a clip here.] Something that actually exists, other than in the preconceptions and pitches ("I've got this great idea, we go to Cuba, the place that gave birth to son, rumba, cha-cha-cha, mambo, conga, charanga, danzon, mozambique, timba ... and we make a movie about kids playing a form of music that came from North America") of a few foreigners.

Is timba doomed to be a genre only widely recognised once it has died? Where will the documentation be then? Apart from here and timba.com and youtube and muchoswing and Billy's site ... well thank god for all of us.

Wish I had the money, I'd make the definitive timba epic myself.

Al final, he llegado...

Granma has quoted from a story (click here to see it) I wrote about Los Van Van for The Sydney Morning Herald. Of course they haven't attributed me (nor Cristian Muñoz, who took the pic, above), and they inserted a typo, but hey ... I've made it into the Cuban press!
Here is the link to the original story (in English).

Three shrinking violets: Amaray, Tanja and El Indio.

So what else do you, when you've had two kick-arse holidays in one year, which saw you living a dream of non-stop timba and dancing, but you've returned to a place where neither of those things is set to be a regular feature, and you have a huge debt which prevents you from skipping off to, say, Havana? Well, you spend most of your time talking with your timba-nerd friends online. And the rest, watching timba videos ...

I finally got my paws on Knock Out: Bamboleo v Manolito. It's not a DVD with a lot of suspense - you can easily guess who wins this bout (hint: it ain't Bamboleo), and despite Tanja's braying, it's worth it for the Trabuco stuff alone. It's nicely shot - it has great lighting and staging, and all my boys look gorgeous, and are joined by the other Riverón, Roberto - one of Havana's most popular session bass players (and brother, of course, to Trabuco drummer Roícel) - filling the gap between the untimely death of Trabuco stalwart Eduardo Mora and the arrival of his replacement, the lovely Roberto El Chino. Riverón the elder isn't exactly the hippest looking dude in the world (he could get a few tips on how to be a spunkrat from that brother of his), but he's a nice player (as his impressive CV attests).
I'm not a musician, and don't usually notice the nuances of various performances/musos - unless a singer or the metales are obviously out of tune (heard a lot of that in Havana) - but it's interesting how different Trabuco sound on this live recording and it appears to be largely due to Riverón the other (unless different arrangements were made, then abandoned before I saw them a squillion times in Havana and Italy). The sound is a lot fatter, a lot funkier, and a lot less like the Trabuco I'm used to. I like it. But it is very different. One of the songs which really benefits from this transformation is No te pases (sometimes called Tu puedes llegar) - a limp pop-reggaeton pastiche when it first appeared on the Locos Por Mi Habana album, here it becomes a solid tropical rock-funk number. Not very Manolito, but very, very good.

Trabuco's maestro,with Roberto Riverón behind him.

The sound overall is great, and the accompanying CD is a nice bonus. It has all the songs from the DVD (to save you ripping an audio version - how thoughtful) as well as a couple of others, including Comunicate. I'm very grateful to have some good quality Trabauco en vivo material: almost all the songs have evolved since they were recorded, and now have great mambos and coros which weren't on the original CDs.
(There is a clip of Se Rompieron Los Termómetros here.)

I also bought Klimax, the best Cuban music. It has some great cameos (Los que Son Son's Mandy, on Te confunde ser esa mujer, Vannia on Me sube la fiebre) and some I could do without (Charanga Habanera's Leonid, on Mi estrella), and leaves me asking the question: why the fuck isn't Calunga there knocking us all dead with Juego de Manos or Aún Así?

"Pupy, qué linda toca Pupy." With Klimax's Joel and Juan Carlos and Mandy.

Despite both being basically performance DVDs, the two are very different: the Knock Out DVD is pretty much just two timba bands going at it live. The Klimax DVD, on the other hand, has Chucho Valdés banging out some jazz and lots of chat from Piloto about the group, his composer father and Cuban music in general, as well as interviews with the likes of Juan Formell, Pupy and Valdés. The Knock Out video has a few talking heads too (including Adalberto Alvarez and Haila), but it's a much less academic affair - more for the hips (and ears and eyes); less for the brain. The Klimax DVD is probably a more-rounded affair musically, what with the jazz tunes and such (the other Riverón - who used to be a member of Klimax - turns up here too, having a bit of a jam with another Klimax alumno Marco Crego), but it's a bit hit-and-miss for me. But maybe it's because I think Piloto's music is a bit hit-and-miss these days. I don't know. Klimax have always perplexed and frustrated me: they have moments of absolute perfection. And moments of utter cacophony. And on this DVD, moments that just leave me cold. Jazz, schmazz. Dame timba!

El maestro de Klimax, Piloto.

And speaking of perfection (nice segue, eh?), I was tooling around on youtube, as I sometimes do, and I found this Bamboleo video - yes , yes, I know I just dismissed them in less than a phrase in a paragraph above, but this has Vannia and Yordamis, and it's Yo no me parezco a nadie - one of my all-time favourite songs. It's from a DVD called Cubamania, which also features tracks by Klimax, Angel Bonne and Bamboleo are Tumbao Havana, La Farandula and La Barriada.

Possibly, I'm obsessed. (Do you think?) I have another clip of Pupy's Timba a Pogolotti, from the rehearsal in Rome, and I just love it. There is so much going on - apart from the music - the dynamics and interactions between everyone playing, as well as the other musos, just hanging out watching - all these things tell a story.

This one has a great start: the band has already started playing, when Pupy waves Mandy, Pepito and Jannier towards him, to explain something to them. They nod, then walk back to the front of the stage. I guess he was talking about a new coro, because this clip doesn't contain the cuerpo - or anything that's on the Mi Timba 'Cerra' album: it's all new, cool stuff. Then later, there is Pepito boogieing on down, and El Tosco, flute in hand, arms spread wide, singing in front of Pupy's piano ... It's all good.

The musicos are Pupy's Mandy, Pepito, Jannier, Osiris, Bombon, Reinier, Gerardo and, er Pupy, with the Elite's Yanel on congas, and NG's metales and Alan on batería.

I've split it into two parts to get around that pesky youtube 100mb upload limit. The second part (I'm perverse) is below; go here for the other.

Last night I went to see a local band called Mucho Mambo. They don't play very often, because they have an eight-piece (sometimes nine-piece) brass section, and logistically (not to mention financially), it can be a little tricky. I met up with bandleader Martin Taylor on Sunday night (we spent two hours talking about Cuban music. As usual, it seemed like two minutes.) and he told me they had only rehearsed once, but these guys are pros, and they sounded great. Not all stuff that's strictly up my calle (mambo, bolero etc), and they did Son de la Loma, but you have to admire their awesomeness in pulling this stuff off (Prado, Puentes, etc) - the metales in particular were really good.

Then when I got home, I got into bed with my laptop, as usual (yeah yeah, I know, I'm really sad) and rewatched the videos I made from the soundcheck in Rome, which was really a rehearsal for the gig with Pupy y los que Son Son, NG la Banda, Manolin and Paulito. And I thought, you know what? These are actually pretty good. I mean the quality isn't great, but you can feel the vibe that was created by having all these musicians together on one stage. And also to see them challenged by the material: NG's horns, for instance, didn't know the mambos for Pupy's Timba a Pogolotti; but all of them seemed to know Manolin's La Bola inside out. You could tell they were all buzzing from hanging out and playing together too: when they weren't playing, most of them were hanging around on the stage watching, drinking or playing a bit of percussion.





You can see all this in the videos, and I've embedded La Expresiva, above. It's one of four I've put at youtube. Personnel includes (but isn't limited to) Prida on piano (before Pupy comes in), Tony Cala (hanging out next to him), Pepito and Mandy, El Tosco, Barbara and Monica, Bombon on electronic percussion (and dancing) and Elite pianista Maikel grooving side of stage.
There are three others that I won't put here, cause having a bunch of embedded videos on the page will slow it down for anyone with dialup connections. But here are their links at youtube, and if you watch them in the order listed, you'll be seeing them as the were played on that balmy afternoon.

De la Habana #1
De la Habana/La Expresiva
La Expresiva
Timba a Pogolotti (ensayo)