As a nation, Jamaica is the most influential music nation outside of the USA

[atlbound]

well.....yeah

 

[Gains]

Japan? Brazil is more influential than them musically

and Cuba

 

[Gains]

even our hip hop is more gutter than rican shyt

daddy yankee

 

[Curioser]

The legacy of older Cuban music is still felt around the world for sure but they haven't really modernized the sound(s) to help spawn/influence newer genres. Puerto Ricans from New York basically hijacked the Cuban sound and modernized it to create Salsa.

(cuban)

(cuban w/ some new york puerto Rican)

(new york puerto rican)


(new york puerto rican)

The idea that Cuba didn't and isn't "modernizing" it's music is probably one of most ridiculous things I've heard in life. That is what we do! We create styles and quite often other people run with it. If you think they over there playing compay segundo stuff for 60 years and son hasn't changed it is pure ignorance and lack of understanding of the type of character we have. They had to pull Buena Vista Social Club out of the attic and dust them off. A short list of what we've been doing since 1960. Songo, Mozambique, Trova, Timba, Pilon, pop, nueva Trova, latin jazz, hiphop, punk, conga son, dance hall, fusion, techno, soca, changuii. Salsa is just one genre, that we influenced but it's much deeper than that.

Now I love PR to death but I wouldn't use them as a source to explain Cuba music. The flow is in the wrong direction. We can explain their whole scene cause we fathered it but they can't get back to the source to even know the origins of the same music they are playing.

You cannot separate Cuban individuals from the whole Nuyorican scene. Celia, la Lupe, arsenio rodriguez the cuban god who fathered all of that and died in NY. Cubans behind the scenes were a key element of everything that went on.

But even on the island in isolation from the US we continued building the styles I described earlier that diverge completely from traditional son and rumba as well as New York salsa. DLG a hugely popular group in the 90s was nothing but a rip off of Timba.

Believe they just keep coming back to fountain every couple of years to replenish. Now please tell what genre PR has come up with in that same time frame ( and not reggaeton which was also ACQUIRED)

 

[Gains]

I thought Joe Bataan was Philipino

 

[Curioser]

I cosign that Ricans do spit gutter including Daddy Yankee. I would even take it further and say they are the best whoever did it in Spanish which shouldn't be surprising since they are connected to the birthplace of hip hop. Aldeano is one of the best but it would be joke to try and compare cuban hiphop to Rican hiphop. There is no comparison.

 

[Gains]

I cosign that Ricans do spit gutter including Daddy Yankee. I would even take it further and say they are the best whoever did it in Spanish which shouldn't be surprising since they are connected to the birthplace of hip hop. Aldeano is one of the best but it would be joke to try and compare cuban hiphop to Rican hiphop. There is no comparison.

opinion discarded

 

[Curioser]

opinion discarded

I'm not a fan of Yankee but to say he never spit street shyt just means you don't know what your talking about. My reply is to the "Cubans spit gutter, drugs" yadda yadda.... Uh they don't, there are no guns or drugs on cuban streets for it to even be a topic.

 

[Mac Casper]

1. United States
2. UK

 

[IllmaticDelta]

. But anyway lets put aside logistics here. The dancehall stuff sounds way to similar to hip hop and its been around longer than hip hop. How do we explain that?

I explained in the other thread. Basically, dancehall and rapping are related. They're cousins because they evolved from the same root of Black American Jive/patter.


Jive/Patter---->Scatting--->Jazz/tribal poetry===Rapping (American)

Jive/Patter + scatting-->Toasting--->Deejay===Dancehall style (Jamaican)

Basically, Jamaicans picked up this patter from listening to 1940's/1950's American radio for R&B songs. At the same time, they were hearing these black radio Dj's dropping word play and rhymes with the jive.

More on Jocko, one of the american dj's who was imitated in Jamaica

"
Douglas "Jocko" Henderson ranks with Daddy O' Daylie and Hot Rod Hulbert as one of the original rhythm and blues radio disc jockeys. His smooth, swinging, rhymed talkovers were imitated by the jocks of the early rock and roll era, and became one of the major sources for the rap style. Though his influence on hip-hop was crucial, it took an indirect route as the model for the toasts of early Jamaican sound system deejays. Some say that Jocko's syndicated radio shows, beamed into the Caribbean from Miami provided the standard for Jamaican deejays. Another story claims that sound system promoter and record producer Coxsone Dodd encountered Jocko on one his record buying trips to the U.S., and encouraged his dee-jays to imitate Jocko's style. However his influence reached Jamaica, titles like "The Great Wuga Wuga" by Sir Lord Comic and "Ace from Space" by U. Roy were catch phrases directly appropriated from Jocko's bag of verbal tricks. When Kool DJ Herc adapted the Jamaican sound system to New York City party crowds, the stylized public address patter that accompanied his bass heavy program was rooted in Jocko's rhyming jive patter.

Jocko started in radio in the Baltimore of 1950, moving to Philadelphia, where he attained enough momentum to arrange a daily commute to New York for a second shift. It was in New York that he hosted "Jocko's Rocket Ship", a black oriented television dance party show that was the forerunner of "Soul Train". He also made many appearances as an M.C. of rhythm and blues shows and hosted large scale record hops that anticipated ballroom disco shows."

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jocko-mn0000113325/biography



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Definition of toasting in Jamaican culture

toasting, chatting, or deejaying is the act of talking or chanting, usually in a monotone melody, over a rhythm or beat by a deejay. The lyrics can be either improvised or pre-written. Toasting has been used in various African traditions, such as griots chanting over a drum beat, as well as in Jamaican music forms, such as dancehall, reggae, ska, dub, and lovers rock. Toasting's mix of talking and chanting may have influenced the development of MCing in US hip hop music. The combination of singing and toasting is known as singjaying.

In the late 1950s deejay toasting was developed by Count Machuki. He conceived the idea from listening to disc jockeys on American radio stations. He would do American jive over the music while selecting and playing R&B music. Deejays like Count Machuki working for producers would play the latest hits on traveling sound systems at parties and add their toasts or vocals to the music. These toasts consisted of comedy, boastful commentaries, chants, half-sung rhymes, rhythmic chants, squeals, screams, and rhymed storytelling.

Definition of "Toasts" in Black American culture

Part of the African American oral tradition is toasting (rhymed folk tales about various mythical folk heroes) and signifiying (Signifying refers to the act of using secret or double meanings of words to either communicate multiple meanings to different audiences, or to trick them. To the leader and chorus of a work song, for example, the term “captain” may be used to indicate discontent, while the overseer of the work simultaneously thinks it’s being used as a matter of respect.). Signifiying also involves taking concepts and situations and redefining them. It is part ingenuity, innovation, adaptation, and style. Stories, ideals, and songs can all be signified.

Traditional African American toasting

Toasting has been part of African American urban tradition since Reconstruction as part of a verbal art tradition, dating back to the griots of Africa. African American stories usually lauds the exploits of the clever and not entirely law-abiding trickster hero (not always human) who uses his wits to defeat his opponents.
Toasters continue the oral tradition by recounting the legends and myths of the community in venues ranging from street corner gatherings, bars, and community centers, to libraries and college campuses. As with oral traditions in general, and with other African American art forms as the blues, toasting uses a mixture of repetition and improvisation.
There are many versions of the best-known toasts, often conflicting in detail. Historically, the toast is very male- oriented, and many toasts contain profane or sexual language, although more family-oriented versions also exist.
Well known toasts include "Shine and the Titanic", "Dolemite", "Stack O Lee", "Jo Jo Gun," and "Signifyin' Monkey."

Some pre HipHop examples of the Blackamerican->Rap styles and the Jamaican Toasting->Dancehall styles. No examples of the 1940's Black DJ's though


The Golden Gate Quartet - Preacher & The Bear (1930's)



this is pretty much the same flow, cadence and delivery as Rapper Delight, the first commercial Rap song



Chuck Berry flowing in the early late 1950's/1960's







Pigmeat Markham - Here Comes The Judge (1960s )

-->Jiving over a funk beat


Jazz poetry from 1971/1972




Modern rap style




SugarHill Gang-Rappers Delight 1979 with basically the same flow from the 1930's gospel song from above



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Jamaican Toasting (between 1960's-1970's)

Movements - Count Machuki



SIR LORD COMIC - JACK OF MY TRADE



king stitt--dance beat



U-Roy - Version Galore





Modern Dancehall "Deejay" style

Yellow Man - Over me (1981)



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Now that can some examples from above. The biggest difference is the American examples are more steady flowing and syncopated with the rhymes while the jamaican examples are more freelanced and not syncopated/rhyming to the steady beats. Read below.....



" Rather than riding the beat with a constant flow of syncopated syllables as rappers have since the late 70s, Jamaica’s DJs of the 60s and early 70s and hip-hop’s earliest DJs/MCs would pepper songs with short phrases, often in the form of rhyming couplets, employing the latest slang (including scat-filled routines), and often in a relatively free manner — i.e., without relating too directly to the rhythm of the track playing on the turntable (but frequently connecting to the track’s theme or to specific lyrics or connotations the song may have)."

http://wayneandwax.com/?page_id=271

A bit more on the differences between the Disco Dj's and the Herc scenes and how they impacted the formation of HipHop

From the article below:

"In contrast to Herc's pulled-ups and needle drops, disco dj's favored smooth segues from track to track. They also tended to rap in a more mellifluous style, relating directly, if casually, to the steady beats of the music they were playing, and stringing together long verse like presentations of their own set of stock phrases rather than the freer, more fragmented interjections of the Herculords and their streetwise colleagues. The next generation of hiphop Dj's and Mc's would synthesize these distinct strands, refining (if not outright commercializing) "street" style while bringing in a harder edge to the smooth surfaces of club rap and disco djing."

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The idea that Cuba didn't and isn't "modernizing" it's music is probably one of most ridiculous things I've heard in life. That is what we do! We create styles and quite often other people run with it. If you think they over there playing compay segundo stuff for 60 years and son hasn't changed it is pure ignorance and lack of understanding of the type of character we have. They had to pull Buena Vista Social Club out of the attic and dust them off. A short list of what we've been doing since 1960. Songo, Mozambique, Trova, Timba, Pilon, pop, nueva Trova, latin jazz, hiphop, punk, conga son, dance hall, fusion, techno, soca, changuii. Salsa is just one genre, that we influenced but it's much deeper than that.

I know about Timba (good stuff) but I mean has Cuba birthed any modern styles of music that can catch on elsewhere like Puerto Ricans/Nuyoricans did with Reggaeton or than urban Bachata Dominicans be doing?

Now I love PR to death but I wouldn't use them as a source to explain Cuba music. The flow is in the wrong direction. We can explain their whole scene cause we fathered it but they can't get back to the source to even know the origins of the same music they are playing.

You cannot separate Cuban individuals from the whole Nuyorican scene. Celia, la Lupe, arsenio rodriguez the cuban god who fathered all of that and died in NY. Cubans behind the scenes were a key element of everything that went on.

I know there were Cubans involved but the New York Salsa thing was pred Puerto Rican. Interesting article on the Cuban/Puerto Rican dynamic involved in Sasla

Origins of Salsa the Puerto Rican Influence
by Paul F. Clifford

Salsa has origins in Cuban music but credit for it's worldwide popularity belongs to the Puerto Ricans of New York!

The popularity of Salsa throughout the world, is indirectly a consequence of American economic and social imperialism (MacDonalds, Coca Cola, TV, movies, music etc) but in this case, it is probably a good thing!

Musically, Salsa has its roots firmly based in the Afro-Spanish musical traditions of Cuba but its worldwide popularity should be attributed to the Puerto Ricans of New York. For Non-Latinos, our knowledge of Latin Culture and Music comes from American movies and in most cases that means Puerto Rican experience as depicted in them. Often, the first time we heard the music, it was in the backing track of a movie. It was probably even a movie that motivated us to go to a Latin nightclub for the first time!

Between 1915 and 1930 around 50,000 Puerto Ricans migrated to the USA. However, between 1940 and 1969 an additional 800,000 Puerto Ricans also migrated to the USA (especially to New York City). It can't be a coincidence that this is the same period that interest in Latino musical styles increased throughout the world. This is the period when Mambo, Cha Cha, Rock'n'Roll, Bomba, Boogaloo and other dances dominated the dance floor!

The dominance of Puerto Ricans over New York (North American) Latin culture can be attributed to the fact that Puerto Rico is a US protectorate. The Jones Act (1917) made Puerto Ricans citizens of the USA. Thus Puerto Ricans being able to move freely between the mainland and their island, have also been able to more freely introduce Latin culture into America while maintaining and staying in touch with their own identity and heritage. I would even suggest that America's attempt to Americanise Puerto Rico has just made the Puerto Ricans even more determined to cling to their identity and that for them, Salsa has become the unifying force that binds their homeland and its annex in New York. It is said that there are more Puerto Rican Salsa clubs in New York than there are in Puerto Rico.

When the Puerto Ricans migrated to New York, they often encountered a struggle for life in the ghettos. The only escape from the frustrations of their daily lives was through the traditional music of their homeland - the "Bomba y Plena". Plena is a uniquely Puerto Rican style that deals with contemporary events, it is often referred to as "el periodico cantado" (the sung newspaper). This Puerto Rican musical form, might account for the popularity, throughout the 1960s, of a style of salsa called "musica caliente". Popular artists used lyrics that told a story about the struggles experienced by an average Puerto Rican in New York. Other artists expressed more emotional feelings about their aspirations for the future, the patriotism towards their country, and romance. Many artists, who came from El Barrio (east Harlem and parts of the Bronx), used another uniquely Puerto Rican genre - "Bomba". Through this aggressive Afro-Caribbean beat they expressed their frustration with the conditions they were living in. These musical forms began the modernisation of the 1950s Mambo, which has led to the creation of the Salsa.

By the late 1970's, popular demand for Salsa Caliente dropped significantly. A new generation of listeners and artists started to emerge and salsa abandoned its portrayals of barrio reality in favor of sentimental love lyrics. This new sub-genre of salsa is known as "Salsa Romantica". Salseros such as Eddie Santiago, Luis Enrique, and Lalo Rodriguez were amoung the first artists to begin this transition from musica caliente to musica romantica. Today, Salsa Romantica maintains its popularity with its new wave of stars such as Marc Anthony, La India, Jerry Rivera, and Victor Manuelle attracting old as well as young salsa fans around the world.

Izzy Sanabria (publisher of Latin NY Magazine 1973 to 1985) suggests that the Puerto Rican's appear to have combined Salsa and Mambo steps into one dance.

This blending of styles is particularly evident in what is popularly called Salsa Romantica. Take for instance Puerto Rican musician, Marc Anthony's, "Hasta Que Te Conoci", where the music starts slow (son-muntono/rumba), breaks into a faster tempo (salsa) building to a climax with the trumpets calling to the trombones and they answering (mambo), then the music falls, rebuilds, falls and ends. Well! Salsa might describe a unique component of a dance but it also describes a unique style of music that requires the dancer to mix and match the steps and moves they know to match the music. It is probably now closer to the Puerto Rican Bomba tradition than the Mambo/Rumba Tradition. Bomba is danced by a man and woman who take turns showing off their skills, competing with each other and with the music. I think that describes Salsa pretty well!

Since the early 1800’s, Puerto Rico has borrowed musical styles from Cuba while preserving its home grown musical genres like the seis, bomba, and plena. These and other Puerto Rican influences are evident in the Latin music that has come from New York since the 1940s.

During the 1930s and 1940s Cuban music (particularly the Rumba) had, through the movies, gained a following within America and Europe. However, this was nothing compared with the following Afro-American jazz gained in the 1940s. As the two styles confronted each other a fusion of the Latin and Jazz styles occurred.

Big band leaders, such as Puerto Rico's Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez and Cuba's Machito, expanded the mambo section of the son, creating a new style of music and they can be credited with forming the musical foundation for the creation of Salsa.

Until the US severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1962, the New York and Cuban musicians continually interacted, forming parallel Latin music styles. After 1962, New York based music began incorporating the inspiration of the world around them, forming a distinctively New York Latin style that is dominated by influences from Puerto Rico.

From 1962, Puerto Rico became the only place in the world that (had access to and) was recognised by the American music market as having a connection with the music. Since the 1970s Puerto Rico has claimed the music as its own and dominates the Latin music market.

The term salsa, much like the term jazz, is simply a word used to describe a fusion of different rhythms. It was invented at the end of the 1960s to market Latino music and thanks to the New York Puerto Ricans has gained a following throughout the Latino and Non-Latino world. Cuba might own the musical heritage but the credit of taking it to the world should be given to the people of Puerto Rico who now preserve it and promote it as a globally popular tradition.

http://www.oocities.org/sd_au/articles/sdhsalsapr.htm

But even on the island in isolation from the US we continued building the styles I described earlier that diverge completely from traditional son and rumba as well as New York salsa. DLG a hugely popular group in the 90s was nothing but a rip off of Timba.

Believe they just keep coming back to fountain every couple of years to replenish. Now please tell what genre PR has come up with in that same time frame ( and not reggaeton which was also ACQUIRED)

Puerto Ricans really haven't created that many styles recently either to be honest but they blew up reggaeton and they also did freestyle and latin house

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I thought Joe Bataan was Philipino

half Black American/Filipino

 

[Gains]

I'm not a fan of Yankee but to say he never spit street shyt just means you don't know what your talking about. .

spitting street shyt don't make you street







also Silvio Rodriguez son raps

 

[Curioser]

The article is BS... The same Nuyorican revisionist history. Tito puente did not extend any Mambo in son, he just played mambo like his Cuban headmaster taught him. Nothing that puente plays even sounds like son. Arsenio Rodriguez made up what they try to call mambo in son, and he did it while playing alongside all of these well known Rican stars. The reason he didn't blow is cause he was black, ugly and blind.


Then it says salsa dance isn't like mambo/rumba but like bomba. Wtf?!?! I have never seen a bomba couple but then again I'm not Puertorican.



Guaguanco which is a form of Rumba and which is the base rhythm for 99% of Puerto Rican Salsa ( when a cuban on the island hears salsa they say oh that's guaguanco) is danced exactly as described in that article ( a man and a woman competing).



Salsa is food in Cuba, Casino is the real name of the dance after where it was danced prior yo the revolution. And yes it is not like rumba and mambo at all because it comes from son. Son by the way idiots in the USA call Rhumba on dancing with the stars. Rumba is completely different.


Here is dancing son



Looks an awful like a slower Salsa/Casino right?

 

[Curioser]

You think Yankee not from the hood then your crazy.