Prometheus 6

…is only semi-random. When the glories of my RSS reader are unveiled in the form of a links page, Sensory Overload will be in the Chicana/Latina section.

Fiesta Boricua en San Francisco ~ or, What's Your Clave?

I just bought my ticket and can't wait to see John Santos and the Machete Ensemble at the ODC Theater in San Francisco this Saturday, August 7 ! The show is called Fiesta Boricua ~ The Puerto Rican Element in Jazz and Salsa. John and his band are brilliant at blending traditional Yoruba and Cuban forms with innovative, modern, contemporary latin jazz arrangements ~ their shows are HOT and fun. Of course, they are from the Bay Area ~ we kick-ass here. Damn, between Saturday night with John Santos and Sunday afternoon with Dolores Huerta, this weekend is going to be amazing!

I first learned about John Santos maybe 10-11 years ago (um, when I was about 10 ~ yeah right) ~ anyway, my friends Kristina and Ian were taking this class that John was teaching in The Mission: What is This Thing Called Clave? If you don't know, clave is a rhythm that is played by striking one wooden stick against another, or on percussion ~~ although some songs might not include the actual clave instrument and instead there is an implied clave ~ i.e., feel the music and find the damn beat yourself! :) Anyway, clave is a five-note, two-bar rhythm pattern which generates rhythmic measurement and is the foundation and backbone of Salsa (and all Afro-Cuban based music). Salsa musicians always say that salsa music should obey the clave. In fact, clave is the primary rule and chief factor that defines all music called "Salsa" ~~ it's what you try to listen for when you're figuring out whether to shimmy forward quick-quick-slow, or backwards right-rock-back when you salsa dance. As you can imagine, the concept of clave goes far beyond Latino and African music, breathing rhythm into our friendships, relationships, emotions, enjoyment of life, and even endurance in hard times. Check out this excerpt from the inscription found on the inside cover of the first issue of New York's Clave magazine, published throughout the 1970s:

Clave...To us the word goes beyond explanations and definitions. It means life, salsa, the food of our leisure time, the motion of intense rhythm, the emotion of 20,000 people simultaneously grooving to the natural sounds of life. It's being in beat, on key, on clave....It means to be on top of things, to be playing it right...Clave is history, it's culture. African drums from far off places like Nigeria, Dahomey, and Ghana married the Spanish guitar to bring us clave. The seeds were planted in the Caribbean and now their grandchild is Salsa.