Timba and its meanings The semiotic scaffoldings of one aggressive Cuban music genre Rubén López Cano Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya [email protected] www.lopezcano.net Key words: Music topics, Music affordances, Narrative schemata, Music cynicism, Semiotic scaffoldings, Enactive approach to cognitive musical semiotics. Rubén López Cano 2005 Los contenidos de este texto están bajo una licencia Creative Commons. Consúltela antes de usarlo. The content on this text is under a Creative Commons license. Consult it before using this article. Cómo citar este artículo: How to cite this article: López Cano, Rubén. 2005. “Timba and its meanings. The semiotic scaffoldings of one aggressive Cuban music genre”. Paper presented at 13th IASPM Conference Universitá La Sapienza, Roma. Rome, Italy, July 25-30, 2005. On-line version: www.lopezcano.net (Consultado o descargado [día, mes y año]) (Accessed [Day Month Year of access]) Timba and its meanings Rubén López Cano In this paper I will talk about the meanings of Timba, however, I will specially focus on cynicism. This work is complementing other articles that are at your disposal on the internet. (Note 1) While reading them you can find definitions, concepts and relevant examples about which I will talk later on in this paper. I encourage the reader to consult them throughout the reading of this article. (Note 2) 1. What is Timba? Timba is one of the most interesting genres developed in Cuba in recent years. Timba is just like Salsa, but with very strong accents from Afro-Cuban music traditions as well as Afro-North American Pop music. Indeed, timba mixes elements of Classical Son, Rumba, Yoruba and other African religious airs, and also Afro-Cuban elements, never introduced in dance music before, along with melodies, rhythms, brass solos and bass lines taken from Funk (like James Brown, Earth, Wind and Fire or the Temptations) and R&B or other dance music. It is also possible to listen to Hip-hop or Reagge in timba, as well as to reminiscences of Rock, Reaggeton, and so on. (Note 3) The outcome of this hybridisation is an extremely aggressive dance music, full of sexual movements who break the traditional sensuality of salsa. The lyrics are developed in the traditional way of other Caribbean types of music (a narrative section followed by several refrains in responsorial style), but at the same time they introduce vulgar expressions taken from the street jargon and black people expressions. Timba’s songs deal with the daily problems of Cuban youth, derived by the strong crisis suffered in the island since the fall of the Berlin wall. Timba is the “sound of the Cuban’s crisis” (Perna, Timba). It tells stories closely linked with tourism industry and introduces all the problems provoked by this one, such as: prostitution, crazy pursuit of dollars, emergence of new economical classes and reorganization of relationship rules among Cubans. This last is due to the increasing need to establish interested love relationships with foreigners in order to leave the island and its misery. In my understanding, Timba is a kind of semiotic machinery devoted to organize, in a symbolic way, the aggressiveness rising from young Cuban people. It is a way to face their “total crisis”. (note 4) Rubén López Cano 2005 2 Timba and its meanings Rubén López Cano 2. Main meanings associated with Timba Timba has several meaning areas. Among them it is crucial to mention the followings: (1) Cubanism: the renewal of Cuban identity marks and Cuban pride specially in lowest classes; (2) Racial: timba carries out a strong defense of Black people and Black culture. It claims for a restoration of Black Pride with a bit of arrogance, emphasising on black people attributes such as their sexual power; (3) Religiosity: timba has integrated elements from afro Cuban syncretic religious practices, as Santeria which in other times was considered dangerous by the Cuban regime; (4) Modernity: timba introduces a vanguard approach in look, clothing, music and way of dance; (5) Cuban Male Chauvinism: timba makes references to male hypersexuality and promiscuity, male narcissism and affective mistreat to women, and (6) The main problems of Cuban economic, social and moral crisis, as dollar pursuit, promiscuity, sexual tourism, arranged love relationships with foreigners and “jineterismo” (rangerism: several ways of prostitution). One of the most interesting signification processes in timba deals with the creation of one kind of cultural archetype that I call “the Tough Boy from Havana”. This archetype often appears in the lyrics, as well as in the band members and singers movements on stage.(note 5) The tough boy from Havana unfolds all those aforementioned attributes, in order for him to face his hard reality: he is feared and he wants to be feared, he claims “he is the best”, his sexuality is extremely hyperbolic and when a girl breaks up with him for a rich tourist, he doesn’t suffer, his attitude doesn’t change at all. Moreover he mocks the situation because, despite everything, he continues and will continue being the best. He has got “stony” feelings. The tough boy of Havana is deeply cynical. This cynical character also plays a main role in Pedro Juan Guitierrez writings. (note 6) This kind of archetype created by Timba is nothing more than one of the different semiotic scaffoldings, offering its fans a path to reorganize their aggressiveness in a symbolic way. (note 7) The aim of my research in Cuban Timba is to depict how this Semiotic machinery works and to detect what kind of affordances Timba offers to Cubans regarding their crisis. The concept of affordances comes from ecological approaches to perception theories (Gibson The ecological approach) and refers to the collection of possible actions that we are able to do with objects and Rubén López Cano 2005 3 Timba and its meanings Rubén López Cano that guide and determine some of the cognitive processes we generate from/with them. Musical affordances constitute the things we can do with music objects, through which we develop specific ways of understanding them.(note 8) Music offers affordances to its listeners, dancers or performers as well as its theoreticians, who try to understand music and interpret it according to their social and cultural contexts. How does timba build cynicism? Or in other words, how does it unfold the affordances who allow their fans to construct their personal semiotic scaffoldings in order to develop cynical attitudes toward their reality? 3. Timba cynicism Let’s see an example. In the song known as El Temba of Charanga Habanera, which is included in Pa’ que se entere la habana CD (1996), a boy tells his girl that she is extremely beautiful, but in the meantime he also says he cannot commit himself to her: he doesn’t want to marry because he doesn’t have enough money to cover all her material needs. Without feeling bad, he decides to tell her (Note 9): “Look up for a temba (A mature guy of 30-50 years old, with money, usually a rich foreigner), who supports you, so you will be able to enjoy and have everything you want… look up for a Papi-riki (sweet daddy, rich daddy!!!), with a lot of güaniquiqui”… (Money. More likely U$ dollars…) ; Audio example 1. El Temba. From the CD Pa’ que se entere la habana (1996) by Charanga Habanera. However, cynicism is not only detected in the words. In Timba, music itself is capable of supporting situations of cynicism. Timba is a mix of several kinds of music, an amalgam of different music genres. Each one of them works as a musical topic in every Timba song. It is important to remember that a musical topic is the fragment inserted in a song that offers a style far different from the one that actually charatcerizes the song itself. (note 10) Special combinations of musical topics are associated with songs which express cynicism. Rubén López Cano 2005 4 Timba and its meanings Rubén López Cano To see how it works, let us now examine the song Le mentí, also by Charanga Habanera. (Note 11) The first part of the song is built on the music topic of Twee ballad (like a Mexican or Venezuelan soap opera theme). In this genre the song voice sings: “I feel like a slave of a love that’s finished/ I know she’s lost, mad about me/ I’m sorry but I feel the love’s moving away/ and I try to hold it but it goes with the wind. I know I don’t love her and that I hurt her a lot,/ there’s no other way than a sweet farewell/...·Then the music topic changes to Romantic salsa. And the voice sings: “…the sad thing is that I know there is no other feeling, I know I don’t love her simply ‘cause time’s over”. The refrain of the song insists in these words: “I lied, I said I loved her, and I didn’t want her; I saw her lost and I lied. I’ll prove that she’s not controlling me anymore, that there’s no beginning without ending, that I’ve found my freedom…”. All these sections express feelings of sorrow and pity: the boy doesn’t have anymore love for his girlfriend and he is unable to tell her the truth. Nevertheless, from the minute 2’39’’ the singer introduces new elements in a refrain developed in responsorial style: Chorus: I lied, I said I loved her, and I didn’t want her Solo: I was never happy with her; I saw her lost and I lied… Chorus: I lied… Solo: I got tired of pretending, I couldn’t bear that lifestyle… Chorus: I lied… Solo: It was rather insincere and yet truth always wins, for sure!..