TS: Jamaica vs. Cuba

cuba still clearly wins, though, when it comes to world influence

Cuba laid foundation for salsa which was pretty important in Puerto Rico; New York; Cali, Colombia (still is important); and Venezuela, to some extent. Salsa now has an international but not exactly mainstream audience.

The Dominican Republic's bachata is supposedly based on Cuban bolero son.

Sonora Matancera, Celia Cruz, and Beny More were all hugely popular throughout most of Latin America, including Mexico. Perez Prado also popularized mambo in Mexico before it reached much of an audience in the U.S. (On the other hand, Mexican popular music doesn't seem to have absorbed that much from Cuban music.)

Cuban music has also proven fairly popular in parts of Africa, so there's been a feeding back of Afro-Latin forms into African culture. I don't know much about this, but I think that at times Cuban music has been pretty big in Africa.

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I'm not sure I'm ready to take sides though.

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Current Cuban timba is said to borrow from reggae, but I think there's probably a heavier African-American (especially funk) element to it. Not sure why there's a relative lack of mutual influence except that there's the language barrier, plus they are both close to the U.S., which gives them plenty to work with in conjunction with their native developments.

(I'll say Cuba though: my apartment is cold, my landlord is a liar, and I am ready to join the revolution, preferably a violent one.)

i always have felt that the jamaican influence on early hip-hop was a bit overstated... i mean, if jamaica hadn't existed, herc and flash would still have done everything they did. what does interest me is the similarities: the sound systems battling in the slums, the dj cultures demanding all the versions of singles, the touchy relationship with the distant white audience, etc. i think it's a case of simultaneous and for all practical purposes independant development...

also, reggae is quite as big in parts of africa as cuban music [or hip-hop, for that matter]

perhaps the cuban non-technologist aspect can be related to making music in a communist country? probably not. but i want to point out the essential reduction to be made from "ways of receiving / transmitting music" to "notable experimentation with new technologies" which i think is an interesting identification...

That said with a few honourable exceptions bands adopting reggae as their main rhythm outside of Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora seem to be universally dire. Maybe that's just my perspective from the South Pacific where reggae has been taken up as a music of 'third world' protest but usually done very badly. When I think back to British bands attempts to do a reggae song in the seventies outside of those who could afford to go to Jamaica and get Sly and Robbie to do their rhythm track for them they were mostly terrible as well. The bad effects of Cuban influence on the other hand have mostly been restricted to a bit of bad conga playing.

I wouldn't say that, look at all the bad faux-salsa, pseudo-montuno that has been in pop music since the '60s, that's all Cuba.

Then again, it did give us 'Spice Up Your Life'.

How you figure? Herc came from Jamaica and it was his yearning to re-create the sound system parties in Kingston that caused him to throw parties in a Bronx rec room. It was the Jamaican deejay/toaster that served as the model for the first mc's. If anything, the Jamaican influence on hip hop is understated.

So you think it's just a mere coincidence that a Jamaican ex-pat threw Jamaican style parties in NY and shortly thereafter a whole party culture which basically mirrored Kingston's sprouted? (the two were different, but 'eerily' similar in many important aspects

Some good examples of collaborations include:

Papa Noel/Papi Oviedo "Bana Congo"
Manu Dibango/Patria Cuarteto "Cubafrica"
Los Afro Salseros De Senegal "En La Habana"

The lack of notably technological wizardry in Cuba is probably partly due to the economic limitations they have had to deal with after the revolution, but I think it may also be related to less of a need to invent things from scratch. I'm pretty sure that the African slaves brought to Cuba were allowed to maintain more of their culture than blacks in Jamaica. More folkways were preserved especially around drumming. (Although I suddenly realize that I know hardly anything about the history of Jamaica.)

Maybe. Of course, Cuban music has been inventive in other ways, and hasn't just been about preserving tradition, by any means.

mig, I don't follow your chart completely, but a lot of Cuban music is also on the 2 (mambo, and, at the very least, some cha cha cha).

Also, Jamaica too has (or at least had) at least one excellent music school, and many of the studio musicians (which was a relatively small circle) graduated from it and are extremely capable musicians. The vast majority of songs written in Jamaica prior to the mid-80s were done so on traditional instruments. The singers also had a fair deal of musical knowledge. Studios would have open auditions almost every day of the week, where singers would come and sing their own compositions, either a capella or accompanying themselves on the guitar. If the talent scout/producer thought it was a strong tune, he'd invite the singer in and they'd flesh it out and give it a proper arrangement.

I keep flip-flopping on the TS question itself. I think that so far I probably like more music that comes directly out of Jamaica than what comes directly out of Cuba (and I don't even like that broad a range of Jamaican music--mostly just roots reggae and dub, with a smattering of dance-hall), but Cuba is more important to me if I factor in the fact that it laid the foundation for other Afro-Latin music, especially salsa oviously.

http://www.slipcue.com/music/cuba/cubamain.html

Picadillo

Timba.com

Descarga.com

In fact, maybe I should buy this just to get more familiar with what I keep saying I don't really like. I would probably like the folkloric selections.

Small bump here... How was this even up for debate? Even if you say: Alright, despite Cuba's dominant influence on Latin dance music, Jamaica still wins because of Kool Herc's bridge from dub to hip hop, you then have to acknowledge Cuba's profound rhythmic influence via Congo Square, NOLA on jazz/blues, then rnb, soul, and the rock & roll that sprung from it. African slaves had percussion taken away from them. The story of 20th Century pop music is largely the story of Cuban rhythm.