Thomas wrote:
While I'm open to learn some explicit rules - if there are any - from Rumba experts, my take is that Son clave was the norm with the early form of Yambú, with cajones; so if you wish to play Yambú really traditional, you pick up on that.
I agree, and would even go so far as to say son clave was, if not the norm, then quite common in early guaguancó as well.
I have no concrete proof to support it, but my suspicion is that rumba playing was fairly non-standardized until the advent of recordings and large-scale formalized instruction began, relatively recently.
Before, I imagine rumberos who got together regularly in one place played rumba one way, those in another slightly differently, and so on. And if it all sounded good nobody worried too much about it. Remember we are talking about guys playing on drawers, codfish boxes, tack-head congas tuned over a fire, whatever was available.
I say this because are so many recorded examples of odd deviations from "standard" rumba, especially from the early days, for it to be otherwise. Not only the classic "cruzao" style (playing the tres/dos on the first two notes of clave), which is now considered a cardinal sin among most rumberos, but the drums are tuned to unusal intervals, even the high and low tones of the drums reversed, all sorts of "crazy" things. Listen closely to those old records by Mongo, Alberto Zayas, Patato y Totico, you will hear all this stuff.
I think someone posted here once a recording of a columbia sung over a guaguancó. Last year I witnessed Ricardo Santa Cruz start doing this at a rumba and then get kind of pissed off when the drummers suddenly switched to a columbia pattern.
There is even a recent recording of a yambú by Coro Folklorico that starts in son clave and ends up in rumba clave ("Mi Yambú" on the "...en un solar habanero" album). Does this "mistake" ruin the recording? Not at all, I think it's beautiful. Now, if I were to make a rumba album, would I allow something like that? I doubt it. There are some things only mayores can get away with.
I think most of the time it really comes down to just general agreement among the people you are playing with at the moment. If all the guys are insisting on hearing yambú with son clave, it's probably more fun to just oblige them than to try to convince them otherwise.