Understanding how the rhythmic cycle known as the clave functions is the key to playing, listening to and dancing to its music. AfroCuban, or salsa music as it is often known in the United States, in a very real sense can be thought of as an ongoing dance between African drums and European instruments and harmony. The basic instrumentation often involves timbales, conga, and bongos partnered with bass, piano and brass winds. The clave pattern serves as the rhythmic basis for a song as other instruments and voice dance around its pattern.
Incorporating clave rhythms and the associated bass pattern known as the tumbao has been done for decades in American pop music. With some some creative thinking, applying AfroCuban rhythms is a great way to spice up a tune. In their video "Funkifying the Clave," author/percussionist Robbie Ameen and author/bassist Lincoln Goines note that rhythm known as the "Mozambique" has been put to good use by American artists as diverse as Elvin Jones, Steve Gadd and Ray Charles.
Changing the Clave
In some salsa tunes, a steady 2:3 or 3:2 pattern might switch to its opposite from a verse to a chorus or vice versa. This changing the clave is a fairly common device used to better match a melodic phrase or to add rhythmic interest to a tune. This is typically worked out in advance and is accomplished by adding a bar or subtracting a bar, often during a percussion break.
Where there are not enough players to sound the clave pattern (or so they might be freed up to play other parts), a drum machine can be programmed to substitute. Where this may seem stiff and mechanical, many drum machines can be programmed with a “swing” factor that allows for uneven spacing of beats with respect to metronomic time. Another alternative that keeps both hands free is to play a clave pattern using a bass drum petal with a hard beater that strikes a mounted block of plastic or hardwood.
Adapting the Clave to Other Song Forms
Since not everyone has access to a conga player, a bongo player, a timbale player, let alone a horn section and background singers, orchestrating AfroCuban-derived music means exercising some judgment. This is especially valid when applying the clave and tumbao concept to other forms of music that typically rely on an abbreviated rhythm section, such as in pop, blues, Latin jazz and fusion.
In instances when there are multiple percussion players, this means not doubling parts. On the other end of the spectrum, a lone drum set player and an electric bass player and/or keyboard player as the rhythm section might assume several roles typically distributed among various percussion players, horns and piano.
For the drummer, this might take the form of dividing conga and timbale patterns among toms and not doubling the tumbao rhythm on the kick drum. While a keyboard player may be called upon to play a conventional salsa piano part, he or she might also sound horn parts with the right hand while playing the tumbao with the left. The bass player, then, might embellish the tumbao with slaps and pops.
As with all music, the key to orchestration is for each part to add to, but not clutter, the song.
For further reading, check out "The Latin Bass Book" by Oscar Stagnaro and "Salsa and Afro Cuban Montunos for Piano" by Carlos Campos. Recommended listening includes the ensemble recordings of Michel Camilo, Paquito D'Rivera and Danilo Perez.
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