Timba Website - But what is this timba ?!

 

...Women swivel their hips in a maneuver appropriately referred to as 'la batidora' (the blender) or do 'el tembleque' (the shake), punching the air and rippling their torsos. The men bob with a cool side-stepping motion accented with a pelvic thrust, holding their partners from behind...

"The only country where you can go out and dance to live music Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday is Cuba. It doesn't matter if people have to work the next day; they go out and dance and they ride home all packed together on the bus, and everyone is smiling."

(Judy Cantor)

Articles on timba:

  • Timba Brava, the birth of timba according to Tropicana Internacional, the Cuban music magazine:
    - page 1: is timba salsa?
    - page 2: '83-'87: Irakere, Orquesta Reve
    - page 3: '87-'93: NG La Banda
  • Timba - New Styles in Afro-Cuban Popular Music - Evolution or Revolution? by Charles B. Silverman (dec '98)
  • Bring on the Cubans! by Judy Cantor: extensive article about the artists, their life, the business, lots of people being interviewed:
    - page 1: a night at the outdoor dance hall La Tropical
    - page 2: Manolín, Paulito Fernández Gallo
    - page 3: the business, the record labels, the market; the opinion of Alicia Perea, director of the Instituto Cubano de la Música
    - page 4: business at home and abroad; foreign labels coming in; comment of Pachito Alonso
    - page 5: the music! band leaders Adalberto Alvarez, José Luis Cortés, Issac Delgado; musicologist Helio Orovio,
    - page 6: lyrics & government censorship; José Luis Cortés
    - page 7: a night at the Salón Rojo: Charanga Habanera in concert; David Calzado about salaries
    - page 8: Manolín about the musicians' standard of living; bandleaders about touring abroad
  • View the film TropiCola !! "Street-level perspective of life in and around Havana, laced with Havana's popular timba beat; winner of the Latin American Studies Association 1998 Award for Merit in Film"; another link on TropiCola, and a third one
  • ...what's really hot in Havana: the music of timba... it's where hip hop meets salsa... radio interview with David Penalosa

... And the best of the American musicians - Sanchez and his band, and Hargrove, the trumpeter - went beyond the confines of the jazz festival and its all-night jam sessions and searched out Havana's extraordinary dance bands. Hargrove joined Los Van Van, Sanchez performed with Bamboleo, Klimax and Issac Delgado's group.

"one of the amazing things about Cuban music now is that there's no sense of compromise in the popular music", said Sanchez. "It's the smartest pop music I've ever heard, and while it is for a dancing audience, it is really complicated and profound."

(Peter Watrous)

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Last modified on 10.8.99