Hold the mambo

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Why would one of the main roots of salsa be such a turn-off to me? It may be because it just sound old to me. I have to admit I react to it about the same way I used to react to salsa: it's all supposed to be very hot and festive, but if anything it's slightly depressing. And as I've said before, I don't like the sort of lumbering quality it has.

(I think there are some exceptions, but still, I am overwhelmingly turned off by it.)

― Rockist_Scientist (rockist_scientist), Sunday, 1 August 2004 00:26 (twenty-one years ago)

are you talking about late 40s early 50s cuban-in-new york sound? i came into it from jazz not latin dance so for me the central figure is chano pozo, not prado/puente/machito as i suppose it might be for you... is that correct? but if you find their late 40s sides depressing, un-hot, un-festive... gosh, i think that's just you. or you're like a fan of early 80s hardcore who's complaining that late 50s rockabilly is too tame: i suppose, compared to classic salsa, it might seem a bit less exciting than it was at the time...

as far as "lumbering", it was purposefully designed as a difficult dance style, like tango. so it's an acquired taste i guess.

― mig (mig), Sunday, 1 August 2004 19:00 (twenty-one years ago)

are you talking about late 40s early 50s cuban-in-new york sound?

Yes.

for me the central figure is chano pozo, not prado/puente/machito as i suppose it might be for you

That's about right. I can't remember who Chano Pozo is, but I know he must be important since descarga.com has a box set for him.

I don't know what to say either really, but I have trouble listening to it. Maybe if I actually spent some time learning to dance to it I would get to like it. (I could just dance salsa style on 2 to it, but I think to dance well to it, I would probably need to make some other adjustments.) I think maybe because it was borrowing from older styles of jazz, I hear that age, and it ends up sounding old to me. (I realize of course that for people younger than me, 70's salsa could sound just as old.) Not that old is always bad to me, but in this case I have a reaction to mambo that's kind of like the reaction I had to the big band music my mom liked. (Although to complicate matter, I actually probably like more swing than mambo.)

― Rockist_Scientist (rockist_scientist), Sunday, 1 August 2004 19:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Went through a very heavy obsession with the early Machito recordings some years back. There is a definite melancholy feel in there, and that was a big part of the fascination. Ditto the big murky sound and the strange beats. The rockabilly/hardcore comparison seems quite apt - though blues/hardcore might be better: Mambo is one of the main roots of Salsa, but it really isn't the same thing.

― Soukesian, Sunday, 1 August 2004 19:30 (twenty-one years ago)

is there anything in the way of charanga-band son from the late 40s or before that is hotter & more festive?

what about the brazilian bands of the 40s - also heavily influenced by 30s new york jazz, but much more lithesome, not heavy and super syncopated like mambo.

― mig (mig), Sunday, 1 August 2004 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

I think I'm changing my mind about this. The other day, I heard a mambo by Peruchín* that I liked, and I already knew I liked some Eddie Palmieri tracks marked "mambo." I think the ones I don't like tend to have the horns playing the rhythm most of the time.

*I should gain some of the points I lost for not liking mambo simply for knowing who Peruchín is. He was just a name to me before I heard something this weekend, really, but his Monkesque piano playing really jumped out at me.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 21:40 (twenty years ago)

I had a dream that my (actually deceased) grandmother came back from the supermarket with four cans of Peruchín. It was soda, but it was also music at the same time.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 8 September 2005 12:47 (twenty years ago)

Where can one learn how to mambo these days? I've been looking everwhere but it seems that no school offers mambo classes anymore...

― Baaderonixx and the choco-pop babies (baaderonixx), Thursday, 8 September 2005 12:52 (twenty years ago)

Ballroom dance studios still offer mambo, as far as I know, but it's generally as part of a package. Also, keep in mind that it's ballroom dance culture's take on mambo. Actually, I've never learned to mambo, per se, but it's not so distant from the salsa basic, I think.

In fact, there is also a very intense on-2 (so in that sense "mambo" style) school of salsa dancing, especially in New York. I don't know how close on-2 salsa is to the original mambo, but it's certainly related.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:14 (twenty years ago)

Where are you located?

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:16 (twenty years ago)

What is this 'on-2 salsa' you speak of?

xpost: Belgium!

― Baaderonixx and the choco-pop babies (baaderonixx), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:17 (twenty years ago)

Different people, different salsa sub-cultures, dance salsa on different counts. Around here, where I live (Philadelphia), most people (including the Latinos) dance on the one (on the first count of a measure). This is probably the most common way of dancing salsa overall. However, there is a very loud minority that dances on-2, as mambo was danced. In some cases they will simply say that salsa is mambo. (There are lots of arguments about it.) There is also more than one on-2 style. Some of them are fairly straightforward, and some of them get pretty complicated, and, I gather, counterintuitive.

Here's a site related to salsa on-2:

http://www.salsanewyork.com/

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:24 (twenty years ago)

I guess I should have said that the on-2 dancers break on 2, since some of them apparently do also step on the one, but take a back step (if male). It's all sort of complicated, but not in an important way.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:28 (twenty years ago)

Thanks for the link! This is pretty interesting stuff, even though I know nothing about salsa...

― Baaderonixx and the choco-pop babies (baaderonixx), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

Here's an old NYT article about the real or imagined clashes between on-1 and on-2 dancers (with comments, including some from my--mostly virtual--friends Kaysee and Nina):

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.afro-latin/browse_thread/thread/dc2dcc757a9133c2/6b669a7f532b0bba?q=mambo+%22new+york+times%22+salsa&rnum=1&hl=en#6b669a7f532b0bba

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 8 September 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

eleven months pass...

I fucking hate "Mambo Inn." But I've decided that I only hate a certain style of mambo, not all mambo. I don't have a label for the style I don't like, but I usually don't like Machito. Tito Rodriguez is generally more palatable.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Sunday, 3 September 2006 01:01 (nineteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.