Timba

and just what is Timba ?

 

To those of you who regularly go to Cuban Clubs, Timba will be a very large part of the evening. Most of us will know when a Timba track is played but we won't know why it is called timba and not just plain old Cuban Salsa.

Cuban music has never stayed still but has changed constantly due to a massive pool of musical talent. The natural talent that's found in the Cuban people has been heightened by their training from very young ages. Music and dance is also such a part of the Cuban way of life that it is now part of their culture. This integration of Music and dance has been helped by the Cuban's Government commitment to providing the now world renowned training facilities to keep Cuba's traditional music and dance alive as well as moving forward.

So Timba has come about because Cuban musicians have taken the rhythms of Son and Salsa and improvised, fed off each others progress and by adding outside influences. These could be Blues, Hip Hop, rock or just a sound that they love.

In other words Timba is just another but a recent offshoot of Cuban Music.

 

  

Calle Real are from Sweden and their incredible CD Con Fuerza is an example of Timba mainly because Calle Real wrote the tracks they wanted to play and hear without the restraint of needing to sound like anyone or the need to put their Sound into any one category. However in the end it fell into the class of Timba, partly because of the groups love of the Cuban sounds.

 

 

to be continued

 

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So having read this and also googled " what is Timba ", you are still not sure where Salsa ends and Timba starts. Well I am not surprised because Timba by its nature can be very close to Salsa or very far from it musically with no firm divide between the two.

Salsa is as much a dance as it is a gender of music. So the definition of Timba is confused by the fact that Timba's dance is Salsa.

 

To find Timba look to groups such as Los Van Van, Charanga, Issac Delgado, Klimax, Tirso Duarte and Paulito FG.

 

In Timba, like Salsa, the clave is always present but the way in which it is represented in Timba is likely to vary far more than in Salsa.

The feeling of the clave can even be given by playing all the notes but the clave or just by playing it on different instruments.

The form of the Clave is also liable to change or just simply reverse.