So what is a typical piece of music for LA/CBL style?

[miércoles]

I hear comments tossed about casually about music stlyes being particularly suited to either Caribbean/Cuban style dancing or LA style, and I have to plead ignorance.

Obviously, Timba lends itself to a very straight Cuban style of dancing but I'm in the dark as to what would be particularly suited to LA style (probably because I only take Cuban classes and go to predominantly Cuban events).

Can anyone shed any light for me? Just interested.

And another question too ...

Does it matter that much?

I do notice, for instance, that my own dancing differs sometimes greatly from track to track. The basic elements are the same of course but the style, the way I make my steps and the general feel differs.
I'll notice that when dancing to a Timba track I'm doing that typical Cuban light stamping step, circling close to my partner.
Put on some Columbian stuff and it instantly gets a little more boogaloo, i.e. more wide sweeps, almost jive-type turns and the moonwalk type step that someone picked out on my video.

But at the end of the day, it's all great fun. Part of the fun of dancing is hearing and feeling the music and dancing accorindly.

But then again, I still don't know what's "typical LA music" so maybe I'd find it more challenging to adapt to that kind of music.

So, give me a few pointers, folks. What does the LA crowd like to dance to?

 

[ville]

casino:

los van van - agua
manolito y su trabuco - marcando la distancia
pupy y los que son son - la borrachera
miguel enrigues - que te den
calle real - suena conmigo

for example

 

[miércoles]

I think you must have misunderstood.
It doesn't come much more timba and Cuban than Los Van Van and Manolito y su Trabuco. I dance Cuban and know typical Cuban and Timba sounds.
I'm asking what the LA lot consider their music.

 

[ville]

hehe im sorry i didnt misunderstood, just listed some for the fun of it. sorry about it.

-ville

i have heard biiig rumours that la-dancers like la pantera mambo from la 33 and dame cinco from mambomania, dont know if its true then

saludos.

 

[noobster]

I think it's generally easier to dance Cuban to slottie-typical music than the reverse. It's almost impossible to dance slot-style to timba; it feels really wrong. But you could dance Cuban to most of the songs you'd hear at a typical slottie event without too much trouble (aside from that created by crashing into crabby slottie couples).

That said, here are a few I'd have trouble dancing Cuban to. (Actually I'd probably want to dance on2 rather than on1 to them - most of my collection is slanted towards on2-suitable tunes - but that's a fine distinction and probably not relevant for your question.)

Crisis de Identidad (Jimmy Bosch)
Dejame Son~ar (sorry, don't know the artist)
Lejos de Ti (Angel Canales)
Quitate la Mascara (Voces del Milenio)
La Salsa Nunca se Acaba (Susie Hansen)
Yo Soy La Muerte (El Gran Combo)
Se Me Perdio La Cartera (Larry Harlow)
(La Pantera Mambo would for sure be wrong for Cuban also; don't think I'm familiar with Dame Cinco.)

You'll notice lots of them are by Puerto Rican artists, which only makes sense. The percussion is pretty different from whatever it is that makes your hips want to do that Cuban thing (heh), and the songs have lots of breaks, which would interrupt the flow of the Cuban circle but work well with the frequent directional changes of slot-style dancing.

Why don't you mine the VideoClips section for videos of LAon1 dancers and see what they're dancing to?

 

[MacMoto]

(La Pantera Mambo would for sure be wrong for Cuban also; don't think I'm familiar with Dame Cinco.)

I do understand your point about La Pantera Mambo, but that doesn't seem to stop the local Cuban style dancers around here jumping up and dancing to it... :roll:

Dame Cinco :arrow: http ://mambomania.free.fr/Objets/Dame%20cinco%20Single%20def%203m20.mp3

Here are some of the songs that are LA on1 to me:

Vehicle (Tu carrito) - Carlos Oliva
El Temblor - Orquesta La Palabra
I Love Salsa - N'Klabe
Yo No Soy Tu Marido - Michael Stuart
Salsa - Yuri Buenaventura

 

[ville]

the funny part about michael stuart is that his album back to da barrio (which is a killer) is seriously made both cuban and la dancers. which i just find really wierd, but in a good way ofcourse.

 

[Ron Obvious]

To me slot-style music is personified by Grupo Latin Vibe. I couldn't dance Cuban to e.g. "la llave".

By the way isn't it time we stop comparing apples to oranges: if some song has a strong beat on 2 then it's maybe not suitable to dance timba on 1 to, but you can dance son to it. So Cuban style is not a rhythm, it's a coordinate system. In the Cuban polar coordinate system you think in terms of r and Ɵ, whereas in the slot-style cartesian coordinate system you think in terms of x and y.

 

[noobster]

To me slot-style music is personified by Grupo Latin Vibe. I couldn't dance Cuban to e.g. "la llave".

Is that the very smooth, flowy song with a repeated line that [sounds like] "se me quedo la llave del Mercedes"? If so, ITA and I was actually thinking of that song as a great example of can't-do-Cuban-to-it-at-all, but I didn't know the title or artist.

By the way isn't it time we stop comparing apples to oranges: if some song has a strong beat on 2 then it's maybe not suitable to dance timba on 1 to, but you can dance son to it.

Not if it's fast and snappy though.

 

[Ron Obvious]

Is that the very smooth, flowy song with a repeated line that [sounds like] "se me quedo la llave del Mercedes"? If so, ITA and I was actually thinking of that song as a great example of can't-do-Cuban-to-it-at-all, but I didn't know the title or artist.

That's the one.

Not if it's fast and snappy though.

Right.

 

[noobster]

(La Pantera Mambo would for sure be wrong for Cuban also; don't think I'm familiar with Dame Cinco.)

I do understand your point about La Pantera Mambo, but that doesn't seem to stop the local Cuban style dancers around here jumping up and dancing to it...

Well if you only know one style, the only other option is to sit out all the songs that aren't right for that style. If I were a Cuban-only leader I'd probably be out there jumping around to LPM as well.

I've danced on2 to timba with leaders who only knew on2 and, as I mentioned earlier, that is a much more dissonant experience than doing things the other way round.

 

[hyh]

Many songs seems to work fine for both Cuban and Linear.

In this part of the woods, Cubans seem fairly happy if the songs have faster tempo. Thus La Pantera Mambo (La 33) or Lejos De Ti (Angel Canales) seemed fine for Cuban people.

As for I Love Salsa (N'Klabe), I think it's so fast period that it might be easier for Cuban.

Flowy, Slow, and a lot of breaks are not favored by Cubans - based on my observation while DJing some local evenings.

Some fast songs liked by LA/NY but not by Cubans...

No Critiques (Manny Oquendo) - Cubans always ask me if I'm mixing songs

Yo No Tengo Amigo (Mark Dimond et al) - based on one play... Cubans seemed okay at first and then looked like they were ducking for cover and trying to survive through more complex passages... then again that might have been the case for pretty much everyone...

 

[ville]

i have tried to dance la malanga cuban style and for me it is too fast. but the la dancers love it(?)

 

[chrisk]

The following list contains songs that are good for "on 2", which is slot-based as well:

salsanewyork.com/guide/song_list.htm

Looking at the list, I think you can dance on 1 at least for some of them.

 

[hyh]

The following list contains songs that are good for "on 2", which is slot-based as well:

salsanewyork.com/guide/song_list.htm

Looking at the list, I think you can dance on 1 at least for some of them.

You can dance On1 with ALL of them.

 

[MacMoto]

The following list contains songs that are good for "on 2", which is slot-based as well:

http://www.salsanewyork.com/guide/song_list.htm

Looking at the list, I think you can dance on 1 at least for some of them.

You can dance On1 with ALL of them.

Yes on1 dancers who do not dance on2 will consider these songs fine for on1...

 

[noobster]

Well yeah. Pretty much anything you can dance on2 to you can also dance on1 to. The reverse is 99% true as well (there are some songs - mostly pop romantica - where the 2 is so weak that it doesn't feel at all right to dance on2; but it's a small number of tunes, and if you didn't know on1 I guess you could still force it on2).

And as I said, you *can* dance Cuban style to most of the salsa I've heard. What's tricky is not finding songs that are appropriate for on1/on2, but finding songs that a Cuban-only dancer could listen to and say, yeah, my dance really isn't right for this music. That's pretty hard.

The best example I've heard so far is 'La Llave' from Ron Obvious. (Thanks Ron - I've always liked that song and now it's on my iPod. Funny I didn't figure out who it was as I've seen Grupo Latin Vibe several times - they were always at Parkside Bar on alt Fridays and played some other NYC venues intermittently as well - and they've got a pretty distinctive sound.)

Anyway, I'd like to hear what miercoles thinks about trying to do Cuban to this song. For me, that song makes me want the dance to flow, and the funky stamping step of Cuban style is antithetical to that flow.