Smithsonian Folkways, Aug 28, 2020
“The claves -fascinating instrument, perhaps one of the first that humans picked up-two sticks.
Strike them. And they've evolved a lot.
What's important about the claves is the concept of the clave.
There's a lot of variations of rhythm and sound the claves. You know if you if you hold them correctly by making a little cup with one hand like a little bit of a resonating chamber and sitting the clave up there like so as opposed to grabbing it it's a big difference in the sound because then the wood resonates. Here's the difference between this and this.
Now that kind of a pattern also comes into um Latin American music through African music, through African sacred music because a similar pattern would be played usually in triple meter on a bell, on some kind of a metallic instrument -a bell of some kind. And that is used as the timeline to accompany most sacred music in the Congo tradition, Yoruba tradition, and Arará tradition. That, that's a commonality so you could take a rhythm usually played on bell that sounds like this for example that's used to accompany sacred music um
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oh
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The rhythm of the melody- it's very important how it adheres and it uses the bell pattern as its base basis. It’s a very specific way that the song fits rhythmically with the pattern. That idea has made its way into popular music into the rumba into the song and into the idea of composing and arranging. That's where it's really evolved. So the melodies of these traditional sacred songs carry the rhythm of the claves.
And if i play that slow, you could kind of see that. If i go like this, you could see how the rhythms are interlaced
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with
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right on top of this rhythmically.. And if you try to mess with that, you're you're you're wrong. You're out of, You're ”out of claves” so to speak. If you try to play that on the other side of the rhythm, it won't fit. It fights, you know, if you put it anywhere else on the rhythm. It's going to fight. So basically that's the concept with claves in Cuba.
The term claves and the use of this instrument really took a big height in a lot of other countries. It didn't go as far-and even in the United states it's very present- in what we do in the United States because it's a Western Central African phenomenon that the rhythms are based on.
This kind of yin-yang thing that there's this side of the clave and this side
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and the…and the melodic rhythmic figures adhere to this kind of balance. People get very upset if you mess up the count. And other people say “Oh, i don't care about the clave and the clave is like this restriction. I don't need to have that.
And other people from other countries will say “No our music doesn't have claves, but it does you know.. A lot of times it happens in-I hear it happen a lot with Brazilian music. The Brazilian musicians don't study clave per se as part of their music, But their music is very much “in clave.”
The music- it makes sense with the concept of the clave. The rhythms they play adhere to the melodies. And they're very conscious about it.
And if you play it wrong, they'll stop you in a moment and say you got the rhythm wrong. They won't tell you “You're out of clave” because that's a term, that's a terminology that kind of comes out of the Cuban music tradition. But the music is “in clave”..That's where the concept of the clave becomes important-that it's about matching melody to the to the rhythm of the claves.
In a nutshell,you have to take your melody, figure out the best way the claves goes with it, lock it into that, then you're free to build your arrangement around that and and counterpoint.
It is very important you could put counterpoint rhythm, but but you can't mess with the idea of the melody. And the collaborate-that has to be a certain way. You can't mess with that.
Now in New Orleans, the claves is there. But they often cross the claves because it didn't get hammered home the way it did with the more African traditions and African instruments that happened in Cuba. For example. So in New Orleans music you hear it played all over the place in in second line music they played on the on on the snare in Mardi Gras with the accent on the klamath [climax ?]. And the music though is “in clave” again.
Some of you may have heard this song before in New Orleans...thing that goes
“Oh my grandma and your grandma sitting by fire.
My grandma said to your grandma”...
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That was a big hit when i was a kid. And then somebody made a hip-hop version of it a while back. But that melody is totally “in clave”. And sometimes you'll hear um in New Orleans music you know they don't , they're not paying attention so much to the collaborator. The music is automatically, naturally “in clave”. And they'll play it that way, but sometimes it'll be crossed and they're not tripping on it.
In Cuban music, if it gets crossed, somebody's gonna like stop you or give you a weird look or something because it it's really paramount in Cuban music.. That said there's some Cuban music that's “out of clave” too, but just understanding the concept of the clave and as a composer/arranger, you have to keep the claves in mind. You can't randomly write parts that rhythmically don't have the clave in mind. And there's an idea of writing in clave where a certain section of the tune the claves can change, but you have to build your arrangement so it happens naturally. So that if you were playing clobbering through the piece, you wouldn't have to stop or jump the clave or change the rhythm in order to adhere it to the melody. Instead, the composition works around the rhythm of the claves.
One of the most amazing things is that in the Cuban Rumba groups. the claves is essential and who plays it usually the lead singer. It’s amazing the lead singer has to improvise rhythmically and melodically while holding this rhythm.
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Well, the phrasing is like you know all around. But the clarity has to be solid, locking with the drums. So you find a degree of independence that's created by learning Rumba songs that are kind of free, you know sometimes from the claves. But when you come to the antiphonal part - the call and response- that response has to be in the right place with the claves. And if it's not, immediately almost before the words out of your mouth, they're like “No, you know “Mistake”, you know like “Be careful”, you know, “You’re, you’re out of line if you come out with the claves in the wrong spot.
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4. "out of clave" - A Cuban term that means that the claves isn't being played correctly. Here's a comment from that video's discussion thread about being "out of clave":
@pierrezapata90, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htz94NNaUfo
"Just as he explains around the middle of the video- the
Claves are so simple that they can often be overlooked by some as silly, but
the truth is, the clave is so important for setting the rhythm that the
melodies are forced to follow.
The piercing sound over a mix can make an entire ensemble
stop if the clave rhythm is messed up."
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5. "in clave" - A Cuban term that means that the song/rhythm [that includes claves] is being correctly played. "In clave" is the opposite of being "out of clave".
