Latin Styles
Latin Jazz, as the name implies, is Jazz that uses rhythms derived from Latin American music. There are two main categories of Latin Jazz:
- Afro-Cuban Jazz – based on Cuban music with genres like mambo, cha-cha and salsa & popular in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s (sometimes referred to as Cubop)
- Afro-Brazilian Jazz – based on Brazilian music with genres like the Bossa Nova and samba & popular in the 1960’s.
This lesson will discuss only the former.
I Got Rhythm
Some music genres, like the Blues and Boogie-Woogie, have such a well-known and icon groove or rhythmic pattern that they are instantly recognisable. Afro-Cuban Jazz is similar. It has a rhythmic pattern that is instantly recognisable as Afro-Cuban, which I’ll explain in a moment.
So the most important aspect and the defining characteristic of all Afro-Cuban music is the rhythm. To play in an Afro-Cuban style means to adhere to a particular rhythm. Without this rhythm, Afro-Cuban Jazz is just regular Jazz. This rhythm is the thing that holds the whole song and the whole genre together.
Traditional Jazz and Afro-Cuban Jazz are rhythmically different. The differences are defined in the below table:
| Traditional Jazz | Afro-Cuban Jazz |
|---|---|
| Swing Rhythm | Straight Rhythm |
| Backbeat (accent on beats 2 & 4) | Clave Rhythm |
In Afro-Cuban Jazz, every instrument is allocated a particular rhythm which they music play throughout the entire song, with little to no variation. All these different rhythms then mesh and combine together to create an Afro-Cuban feel or groove. And the most important of these rhythms is the clave rhythm – which is played on an instrument also called a clave – which are essentially just rhythm sticks.
This clave rhythm is the base rhythm of all Afro-Cuban Jazz – it’s like the foundation of a house. All other instruments are allocated a rhythmic pattern that complements and adds to this clave rhythm. It’s like building layers of different rhythms on top of your foundation clave rhythm to build a kind of rhythmic jigsaw puzzle where all the rhythms fit together to create a nice, tight groove.
Make sure you practice clapping and playing the clave rhythm so that you internalise it. It’s just like with swing rhythm in Traditional Jazz, you really have to feel it, and be comfortable with it, and internalise it.
Clave
The clave is a 2 bar pattern that is repeated throughout the entire song. And there actually isn’t a single universal clave rhythm. Instead, there are a number of different clave rhythms, which are all quite similar, but nevertheless distinct. These are depicted below:
Notice that:
- The 2/3 Clave (2 notes in bar 1 and 3 notes in bar 2) is just the reverse of the 3/2 Clave (3 notes in bar 1 and 2 notes in bar 2)
- The Rhumba Clave is very similar to the Son Clave but delays the last note of the 3 bar by ½ a beat
- There are also other Latin Jazz songs which follow a clave-like rhythm, but are not exactly the same as the Son or Rhumba Clave. Instead they are a slight variation on it. For example Chitlin’s Con Carne (by Kenny Burrell) is a Latin Blues which follows a clave-like rhythm
So the term ‘Latin Jazz’ is somewhat flexible in that you can have a number of different ‘clave-like’ patterns as your base rhythm and still call it ‘Latin Jazz’. But the Son Clave is by far the most common clave used today, so we will be restricting our discussing to the Son Clave.
Once the clave is established, it does not change for the whole song, or at least the section of the song. In fact, many Latin Jazz Standards have a Latin Rhythm Section A and a Swing Rhythm Section B. For example, have a listen to:
- On Green Dolphin Street
- Con Alma
- A Night in Tunisia
- Tin Tin Deo
The melody of the Latin Jazz song generally needs to adhere to this clave rhythm. And as I said before, every other instrument is then allocated a rhythmic pattern that complements the clave rhythm that they play through the whole song. A selection of these rhythms are outlined below:
Notice how these rhythms line up with and embellish the basic clave rhythm. This is what I mean by ‘all the other rhythms complement the base clave rhythm’. Right, so on top of our foundation clave rhythm we have built multiple layers of more complex rhythms, and all together they create an Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz feel. And these rhythms just repeat over and over again for the whole song. So each instrument’s individual part is actually quite simple and even a little boring. But they all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and create a great and interesting sound.
Piano Montuno and Tumbao
Now, as pianists, the two most important rhythms are the:
- Montuno; and
- Tumbao.
A Montuno is essentially just a vamp. As the piano player you just play the same rhythm again and again for the entire song but outlining the chord progression. And Afro-Cuban bands are generally quite big and loud, with a number of horns, the bass and drums. So the Montuno is generally played two handed and doubled an octave apart to create a louder sound so the piano doesn’t get drowned out by all the other instruments.
If there is no bass player in the band, then the piano is in charge of playing both the montuno (in the right hand) and the tumbao (in the left hand).
So again, you can think of all these patterns as a kind of ‘rhythmic vamp’ that’s played through the entire song. And again, it’s important that you practice and internalise these rhythms – by clapping or playing them. They should become second nature and be entirely in your muscle memory.
Alright, so the montuno is a rhythm, but what notes do you actually play? The goal of the pianist is to outline the chord using the montuno rhythm. And there are two main ways of playing the chords:
First, you can effectively arpeggiate each chord (so play broken chords). For example, below is a C6 and Cm6 played as a montuno. Double it in your left hand an octave lower or a 10th lower.
And you can play chord progressions like this. We can also add the tumbao in the left hand. The tumbao is the bass part and just needs to play chord tones –especially the root and the 5th – using the tumbao rhythm. For example, the following chord progression:
Second, instead of arpeggiating the chords, you can break them in two and play the montuno pattern. Let’s say we have a CMaj7 chord. You can start on any one of the chord tones (C, E, G, B) playing an octave, then play two of the other notes in between using that montuno pattern. This is demonstrated below:
Using this approach, you can add in the tumbao in our left hand and play a chord progression.
So to summarise:
- The Montuno is just playing broken chords; and
- The Tumbao is playing the root and/or 5th
Adding Complexity
But this is just the basic montuno. You can now embellish it by adding eighth notes to make it a bit more interesting; but still keeping general underlying basic montuno feel or rhythm going by still accenting the appropriate beats that correspond with the basic montuno.
You can add eighth notes at the start; at the end; in the middle; or everywhere to make the montuno slightly more interesting and complex.
Afro-Cuban Music vs Afro-Cuban Jazz
In Afro-Cuban music, the rhythmic aspect is more important than harmony or melody. So in most Afro Cuban (non-Jazz) music, the harmony is actually quite simple. They use pretty standard chord progressions and usually just use triads. You’re not often going to find many Phrygian chords, or polychords, or heavily altered dominant chords, or other complex chords in Afro-Cuban music. And chord progressions are also generally pretty simple – often just I-V-I-V’s, or I-IV-V-IV’s or II-V-I’s.
Now Afro-Cuban Jazz songs take this same rhythm, but apply to it slightly more complex chords and chord progressions.
Note also, that the distinction between Salsa and Afro-Cuban Latin jazz isn’t always clear cut. But very generally:
- Salsa is danceable, has less improvisation, has more vocalists, and uses complex chords; while
- Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz is less danceable (i.e. has a less driving rhythm), has more improvisation, is more instrumental, and uses complex chords
And each sub-genre of Afro-Cuban music (such as the Cha-cha-cha, Rumba, Mambo, Salsa, Son Montuno, Songo, etc.) has its own particular rhythmic patterns or idiosyncrasies.
Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz
So as I stated at the beginning of this lesson – Afro-Cuban music is all about rhythm. And you keep playing that exact same montuno and tumbao for the entire song – over and over again – just like a vamp. So unlike regular comping, where varying your rhythm is important. In Afro-Cuban Jazz, you shouldn’t vary your rhythm very much at all because the goal is to set up a tight groove and just keep repeating it.
And when it’s time to solo remember that rhythm is more important than melody or harmony. You want to keep your solo nice and simple. Play rhythmically, play loud, and use lots of octaves so that you are heard over the band, and keep to that clave and montuno rhythm.
And that’s really the basis of all Afro-Cuban music – it’s all about the rhythm. So Afro-Cuban ‘Jazz’ essentially just takes these rhythmic ideas – the Clave & Montuno & Tumbao – and applies them to Jazz Chords and then improvises over the top.
So if you want to play a Jazz song in an Afro-Cuban style:
- Change the melody so it adheres to the clave (either the 2/3 or 3/2 clave)
- Then play the chords in a Montuno rhythm with a Tumbao bass part – with all the other instruments playing their own corresponding rhythms if you’re playing with a band
Note, however, that this is just the basics. Each of the aspects that we just discussed can be changed and modified and manipulated to create countless variations on this Afro-Cuban ‘rhythm’ or ‘groove’. Each instrument’s basic rhythm can be embellished and made more complex, while still maintaining its general rhythm or feel.
Have a Listen to
- Machito
- Chano Pozo
- Mario Bauzá
- Chucho Valdez
- Tito Puente
- Gonzalo Rubalcaba
- Eddie Palmeri
- Michel Camilo
- Mongo Santamaria
- Cal Tjader