The nuances of "Bossa Clave"

[@claudiohohagen]

Hi Jordan. I think you're right. I was born in Brazil and grew up in Brazil and Venezuela (just for some context) and started listening to and playing music way before the Internet era. Nowadays you can find Swedish bands playing Cuban timba, Korean ensembles playing samba de roda, Japanese musicians and dancers doing flamenco, and all of this in the correct style with outstanding musicianship because we live culturally in a global world if we want to. And even with the great access we have to diverse musical cultures, Brazilians don't play afro-cuban well and Caribean Latinos don't play Brazilian music well either (there are exceptions, of course) and that is because, as you said, the concept of clave doesn't exist in Brazilian music. What exists in Brazilian music is the concept of 'levadas'. A levada is a pattern, there are different levadas for the same dance rhythm played by an escola de samba instrument with many variations. In a conjunto cubano there is one pattern per instrument for a given dance rhythm, it has few variations and it's always related to the clave. If you compare tamborim to timbales, the tamborim would play telecoteco with lots of variations in and out of the telecoteco, it'll sound great to the listeners and dancers even when it isn't related to the telecoteco any more. The timbalero can't really play much variations of the cascara and if he or she does, the variations need to stay close to the cascara pattern and en clave. Same thing with piano montunos compared to samba guitar levadas, if the montuno gets too far from the expected pattern the band doesn't sound well, the samba guitar can play more variations because it's imitating several different percussion instruments while the montuno piano functions as a percussion instrument per se, it's not imitating other percussion instruments, it's responsible for it's own patterns. Brazilian and Afro-Cuban are two different worlds, when Brazilians play Afro-Cuban they usually get easily bored, lack discipline, and try to introduce variations that don't fit the clave. Caribbean musicians think 'en clave' when playing Brazilian music, they don't vary enough and sound too rigid. These two cultures seem close but actually aren't, that's why you'll find more often an Asian musician playing Afro-Cuban better than a Brazilian or a European playing Samba better than a Cuban, the Asian and the European know that they need to study to get it, the Brazilian and the Cuban think that it's close enough to the music they already know so they can get away with it without studying. That's why Jobim and Sanabria couldn't really get each other.

[@rillloudmother]

interesting. i guess as jobim said to swallow, 'no dun-doo.'

[@claudiohohagen]

@@rillloudmother Smooth :D

[@alainrieder]

Interesting !

[@issamchabaa45]

Very interesting. Tx

[@JordanFerguson]

love this comment! Really really interesting perspective to have experienced both Brazilian and Venezuelan music :)

[@sagandalya108]

My theories related to the clave in general: a) It is an approximation of the combined cycles of 3 and 5. b) Different styles of music can be created and recreated by utilizing a clave that starts on different parts of the bar. c) Claves can work on multiple octaves but they should have a common starting point that might not be the one of each bar.

Nice to see people thinking deeper about questions like this, Jordan. I think you're right that it's not worth getting hung up on the exact words we use to describe stuff. Music is so big and decentralised, evolving from lots of separate pockets of creativity, that it's always going to be messy! I think the most interesting point to dig deeper into is Bobby Sanabria's and Jobim's being disappointment that it was interpreted as a clave. If not clave, how would they have wanted it to be interpreted instead?

[@JordanFerguson]

Cheers Dave! :) As I understand it, Jobim wanted the pattern to be interpreted more like a teleco teco and to function like the tamborim in a roda situation. Theres the rest part that you stick to whilst having the freedom to improvise and add variations to it. So the music isn't reliant on the pattern being consistent throughout.

[@fredmbarros]

I hate to do this, but I guess it’s appropriate in this context: as a Brazilian musician who works mainly in samba and choro-related genres, I totally agree with your main point. I feel like you overthink a bit some stuff - which is understandable in a polemic-inclined argumentative video -, but your conclusion makes total sense to me and I’ve always been frustrated by the fact that non-Brazilians (and inexperienced Brazilians too, tbh) tend to repeat the same pattern throughout the whole song, making it stiff, repetitive and frankly depriving this music of much of its rhythmic interest. The hardest part though is that when people try to mimic the variations we do, they very quickly go into not-very idiomatic stuff. I guess it’s a long process to learn this, though we rarely notice it because we grew up immersed in it, from the ambiguity between 16th-8th-16th and triplets to how each one has a slightly different samba pattern in their mind and yet it works out fine when playing in group, even with people whom you never played with before.

[@JordanFerguson]

Appreciate the comment and thoughts! Yeah overthinking is a skill of mine haha totally agree, it takes a long time for non-Brazilians to get the feel between 16th-8th-16th and triplets that you're talking about. Even really skilled drummers I've played with can't quite get the exact feel on certain licks from samba

[@paulmidgley2801]

Great question about clave. I think the origins of rhythms are important but is it more important than simply being a good rhythm. For instance if you have an Abukua Havana (Cuban?) rhythm QSQQS and start it from the 4th onset and add 2 more QQ you get QSQQSQQ (a Partido Alto?) 2 rhythms separated by over 4000 miles but still both good rhythms.

[@jimskea224]

Jordan, this is perhaps tangentially related to your question. Do you know Oscar Bolão, the percussionist of Carlos Malta's Pife Muderno? They played at the Royal Concert Hall for the Celtic Connections 2017.

[@JordanFerguson]

Hey man, I know of him and I love his book. I never had the chance to meet him but I saw him playing at that Celtic Connections show, Marcos Suzano did a pandeiro workshop in Glasgow too in that time which was great :)