Nate'sKit
Senior Member
Are you saying that if one is not portorican or Cuban , one cannot play Afro Cuban music?
It's like saying " if you're not black , you can't play jazz".
And yes, writing down a clave pattern take 2 bars (8 beats) and it is much more difficult to improvise with 2 limbs when the ostinato is based on a long phrase like that .
I can do a lot of improvising with kick Nd snare while doing a dingaling on the right hand and hat on 2 and 4.
When I try to improvise or just copy what I hear while using a left foot clAve , not so much. Got a loooong way to go and I bet it will be the same for most people.
Heck no. I'm an Irish Ukrainian (one generation through Canada) boy from Cincinnati, OH. I was fortunate to come to this music through these folks coming to town about 20 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IR-HUElPfw
Long story short. I learned by playing one conga, bell, pair of claves, gua gua, or cajon at a time. The interplay of that with the other members of the ensemble is where it's always been at for me.
I can't remember the intellectual concepts that I used to get started, because they aren't clave. Clave is clave. I've never seen or heard anyone get there from counting and mapping it out without putting the time in to just listening to it until it becomes part of you.
That's not different from any other style of music. If it's just an intellectual exercise, then that's what it's going to sound like.