Rueda Hand Signs (Part 20) Tiempo España

There are several types of holds in Cuban salsa one of them being “Tiempo España”. This hold is the starting point for any move which is performed from a close-hold position and is generally danced at the start of a song both for dancing in pairs as well as in Rueda to ease into to the dance. It is however, possible to go back to Tiempo España at any point during a song and is usually associated with slower sections of the music. The partner moves that start from Tiempo España can make for a more relaxed and romantic dance in contrast to some of the fast and energetic moves usually done from Casino and are ideally suited for social dancing in close spaces such as at a live concert where there are a lot of people.

Moreover, Tiempo España is the name of a Rueda formation in Cuban Salsa from where many Rueda calls originate that cannot be called from any other position (i.e. Taro Con La Mano) and which has some specific rules associate with it such as the fact that any change of direction can occur on both beats 1 and 5 contrary to most moves in Casino which always start on beat 1. As discussed in previous posts, while the name “Tiempo España” is not grammatically correct from a Spanish linguistic perspective, the name is not to be taken literally. Tiempo España meaning “Time Spain” is not so much a Spanish expression but rather the name of a hold in Cuban Salsa with a historical reference to the time of Spanish colonial control that plagued the island when the close hold was introduced into Cuban dancing.

The close-hold which evolved to Tiempo España originated in Waltz and became the main hold in Danzon and later in Son Cubano. While this hold was the principal hold in Son it became less popular when it was transferred to Cuban Salsa where the semi-open hold (Casino) is the hold seen predominantly on the dance floor. That being said it is in not wrong in any way to give Tiempo España a higher importance or even spend an entire dance in this hold but on larger dance floors with plenty of free space to move it is more unusual to see couples spending a significant amount of time in this hold other than at the start and the end of a song.

In Rueda, Tiempo España has to be called from any position that would normally lead to Dile Que No i.e. while in Casino one may call Enchufla Tiempo España since Enchufla ends in Dile Que No so at that point we can go into Tiempo España instead of performing a Dile Que No. However we cannot go into Tiempo España directly while in Casino position. The easiest way to get into this formation is to call Dame Tiempo España while the easiest way to get out of it is to call a Dile Que No while dancing in the Tiempo España formation. For this reason the hand sign is an open hand showing towards the dancers as if to signal “stop” as when we get into it we effectively stop ourselves from doing a Dile Que No.

To see a video of the move Tiempo España as well as the hand sign, please click on: https://youtu.be/TQnlooq1Snk

Maykel Blanco (Part 2)

We are back from a fantastic weekend in Scotland culminating in the outstanding performance by Maykel Blanco and his band in the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh last Saturday. It was nice to dance with many of our old friends at this picturesque location right at the heart of Edinburgh listening to some of Maykel Blanco’s greatest hits and introducing our students to the atmosphere of dancing Cuban salsa to live music. Maykel Blanco Y Su Salsa Mayor was as great as we could have hoped for and showed within minutes why they are considered one of Cuba’s top live bands at the moment with their energy and enthusiasm driving people to dance as much as the music itself. In short, it was an amazing night and I can thoroughly recommend to anyone to see this band live if you get the chance.

Maykel’s music has a strong base in son and influences of rumba but he is above all considered to be one of the most popular Timba artists having been influenced by bands such as Manolito y su Trabuco, Los Van Van and NG La Banda. His rise to the upper ranks of Cuban timba music is evidenced not only by his band being voted the best Timba group in Italy in 2006 or the prize they won for the best live concert in Paris in 2007 but his continued success with various songs from his 5 albums, with Salsa Mayor working tirelessly to produce more songs for fans around the world. Some of his most well known hits include Recoge y vete, Anda y Pégate, Dale Lo Que Lleva, Mi Destino, Esto esta, Quitame lo malo and Mi Mulata En La Habana among many others.

The lyrical style of Maykel Blanco’s songs range from humorous to serious songs and talk about Cuban life and music as well as love and affection. The attitude conveyed in his songs is typical of timba songs as well as the musical complexity which includes rhythm changes and a strong polyrhythmic percussion base. However, he does have his own style with some songs ending more abruptly than is commonly expected, particularly by dancers, as well as innovations particularly in his percussion style. Maykel himself describes the song Anda y Pégate as a musical experiment which contains “a little of everything”.

There have been some changes in Maykel Blanco’s band in recent years which is not uncommon in such a big orchestra but given his huge success at such a young age let us hope we have many more songs, albums and concerts to look forward to from this amazingly talented artist.

Maykel Blanco (Part 1)

It has been way too long since Aimi and I last saw a live concert by a Cuban band and it is as rare as ever to get the opportunity to see one of the Cuban artists in the UK. All the more reason why the news of Maykel Blanco playing in Edinburgh on 14th October has made us pretty much drop everything and organise an impromptu visit back to our Scottish salsa roots. We only found out about the event a couple of weeks ago and decided to cancel our Leeds and Selby class on the 14th and 16th for the first time in order to go to Scotland for the weekend and give our students the chance to join us. We are extremely excited about this event not only because it gives us the rare chance to dance to live music by one of our favourite artists who we listen and dance to regularly, but also because some of our students are now at a stage where they share our enthusiasm to the point where they are willing to drive for 4 hours to get to see the concert with us.

Maykel Blanco Cuevas aka Maikel Blanco was born on 21 January 1981 in Havana starting his first band when he was only 15 years old. Even though his family was not from a musical background he learned to play percussion instruments autodidactically playing mainly rumba both in the street and at school.
Since he formed his first orchestra “Suprema Ley” at the age of 18 he has become one of the best and most popular Cuban artists internationally receiving many prizes and tributes. He started out as a percussionist originally but went on to learn keyboard as he was not satisfied with the arrangements of other people. This particular background has led him to adopt a “percussive” piano style catching the attention of timba fans around the world.

Today he performs under the name Maykel Blanco Y Su Salsa Mayor with the orchestra Salsa Mayor which he took over in 2004 from Javier Sotomayor's at only 23 years of age giving him the reputation of the youngest director to ever have led a well-known Cuban orchestra. The band consists of 14 musicians who have risen to international fame particularly in Europe and South America producing many hits that are being danced to at salsa events around the world.

"Maikel Bianco en Janvier 2013" by JBy Jpbazard Jean-Pierre Bazard is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Tresillo (Part 4)

Imagine that we have a rhythm consisting of an 8 pulse structure with 3 onsets which we want to have as evenly spaced as possible in between the silent pulses. One way of accomplishing such a task would be to organise the pulses in such a way that all the onsets are at the start and all the silent pulses are at the end of the rhythm before we start arranging them in a better way so our starting point would then be:

If we define the number of pulses in this example as x and the number of silent pulses as y then x mod y = 8 mod 5 = 3 will give us the number of onsets in this structure. Comparing this to Euclid’s algorithm example from part 3 of the Tresillo blog series we can see that this is equivalent to steps 1 and 2 in the algorithm.

If we now try to put one silent pulse after every sounded pulse then we end up with the following three groupings of sounded and silent pulses as well as a remainder of two silent pulses:

This is therefore equivalent to 5 groupings overall (x) and 3 sounded and silent pulse groupings (y) with the remainder being 5 mod 3 = 2 so 2 is the number of silent pulses we have not yet attributed (z). Therefore at this stage we obtain the same answers as for steps 3 and 4 in Euclid’s algorithm.

Finally, if we now distribute the final two silent onsets we receive 2 equivalent groupings of three pulses (y) and 1 grouping of two pulses (z) so we are left with 3 groupings overall (x) which is equivalent to steps 5 and 6 in the process illustrated in the last post of this series:

It is here that we can see some remarkable discoveries: Firstly, by trying to evenly distribute 3 onsets among 5 silent pulses we have effectively created the Tresillo rhythm which is prevalent or at least implied in any salsa song as part of the son clave. Secondly, the process we have used to try and distribute the onsets evenly among the silent pulses is equivalent to Euclid’s algorithm as demonstrated by this example which is why Toussaint gave this type of rhythm the name Euclidean rhythm.

Toussaint demonstrates that many of the world’s most popular rhythms are in fact Euclidean rhythms although arguable the Tresillo rhythm is the most famous example. A Euclidean rhythm can be completely defined as a function (E) of the number of pulses (p) and the number of onsets (o) and is usually denoted E(o,p). Therefore, the Tresillo rhythm can simply be written as a Euclidean rhythm with the shorthand notation E(3,8).