In the Latinjazz forum (Yahoo groups), Bobby Sanabria recently posted:
"If anyone wants a clinic on how to play the conga drum in straight ahead jazz swing feel context, get this album:
http://www.amazon.com/Candido-featuring ... 170&sr=8-5Candido's first as a leader in 1955. It features a killer band of Al Cohen on tenor, Whitey Mitchell on acoustic bass, Joe Puma on guitar, Dick Katz on piano, and Ted Sommers (who played on a lot of the RCA Puente sessions in the 50's) on drums. Required, required, required, listening."
- Candido
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Speaking of
swing, Mike Spiro and I will be giving a lecture/demonstration at the annual week-long Afro-Cuban workshop at Humboldt State (July 23-20:
http://www.humboldt.edu/afrocuban/).
From the website:
SWING: THE ELUSIVE FEELTues., July 26 • 1:45-3:15 p.m.
Michael Spiro and David Peñalosa will explain and demonstrate
swing, the most elusive and intangible element of Afro-Cuban rhythms.
David Peñalosa will begin the first section by examining the definitions of the term, and by demonstrating how the same cross-rhythms that generate clave, also generate swing. He will next show how triple-subdivisions can be substituted for duple-subdivisions. The first section will conclude with an analysis of stroke displacement, a phenomenon of swing, where certain attack-points fall in-between the triple/duple-subdivision "grid."
- David Peñalosa teaching at the annual HSU Afro-Cuban workshop. Photo: Hohanna Rose © 2010.
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In the second section, Michael Spiro will demonstrate his technique of stroke displacement, which he calls
fix. As Michael says in his groundbreaking book,
The Conga Drummer's Guidebook:
"(In) Afro-centric musics the rhythmic distinction between three subdivisions per beat and four subdivisions per beat (triple vs. duple), is frequently blurred. In several cases, the difference does not exist at all – there is a completely "new" subdivision at work. This is what gives rumba from Cuba and samba from Brazil and even certain kinds of bebop their unique characters . . . I call this 'averaging' of rhythm between a four and a six feel, fix (four and six), and it is an essential component of learning to swing in these styles. Fix is a concept we must acquire, manipulate and finally, internalize" (2006: 38).
- Michael Spiro playing batá at the annual HSU Afro-Cuban workshop. Photo: Hohanna Rose © 2010.
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