by Manuel Gonzales

Night falls, Cuba awakes, and the son rises...

When I feel listless, apathetic toward my life, my surroundings, my friends when I've got the reds, those ugly, Holly Golightly reds and the world looks sluggish, harsh, and cold, I reach deep down inside Austin and pull from her depths the sounds of Latin America -- more specifically, Cuba. I take a shower, make a quick change of clothes, toss on my dancing shoes and head to the Continental Club where, Wednesday nights, those Afro-cuboppers, Grupo Son Yuma, and their blend of twenties, thirties, and forties Cuban son can feed my tired soul with the sounds and smells of good music. With the first notes, warmth spreads through me quicker than a shot or two of Famous Grouse. Rey counts off or Andrea or Matt tap out the clave. Then they plunge. They envelope. Rey's hands sing as they fly across the tight bongo heads; Michel's chops pierce beautiful, discordant notes and rhythms from his trumpet; Horacio's fingers roll down a constant, yet simply flavorful bass line; Barry and Francisco compliment each other, calling and responding to each other in a dancing six-string language; the maracas, alternately played by Matt, Andrea, and Rey, give the music body, shape, life; and behind it all the clave. Constant, pure, simple. The Cuban heart beats to the clave. The rhythm of the clave pulses through their deep red blood, sways with them as they walk, falls from their mouths in musical words, from a musical, rhythmic language, manipulates their hands, their imaginations, their food, their passions, their lives. It is the foundation of their music, and hence, the foundation of a major part of their lives, their beliefs, and their loves.

I'm at Kim Phung's with Rey Arteaga, Barry Cox, Andrea Pryor, Francisco Cortes, and Michel Navedo, eating a late lunch, trying to learn more about Grupo Son Yuma and the magic of son cubano. Missing are bass player Horacio Rodriguez and Matt Willard. I listen for a few minutes as they talk shop and then ask them a few questions about their history, where each came from, how they learned about son cubano, and some background into son cubano.

The word son simply means "song" and is used throughout Latin America and the West Indies to indicate a style of music. Son cubano, a musical genre which mixes Spanish and African influences, had its beginnings in the eastern disricts of Cuba: Guantanamo (with Chang), Baracoa (the supposed origin of the Cuban tres guitar), Manzanillo, and Santiago de Cuba, where son could be heard, played, and danced to in the streets, back alleys, and neighborhoods. And like most South American and Carribean music samba, capoeira, tango, reggae son was first dismissed and then prohibited by the government because of its base, primitive, common sounds, and because of the unrest expressed through its lyrics. Around 1909, son migrated from the eastern districs into the western districts of Cuba, ironically enough, through the aid of the military, where, hitting La Havana, the spirit of son caught and spread like wild fire. National troops from Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, transplanted from their homes and towns, brought with them their instruments the tres and the marmbula and their songs, and it was in La Havana that son took on larger proportions, adding brass to the mix and replacing the marmbula with the bass.

Son groups usually consist of the tres (a six-stringed guitar whose strings are grouped in twos like the twelve-string), the bongo, the marmbula which is replaced in most cases by a double bass, the maracas, the claves, and sometimes a trumpet or two. Two cylindrical, identical, tuned and polished wooden sticks, usually rose wood, an inch and a half thick, six inches long, make the clave. You can hear its sharp, high pitched long-long-long, short-short above the rhythm of the tres and the beating of the bongo, and like the constellations above or the sun that rises every morning, the clave is always present. "It's funny the way they see the clave here compared to how they see it (in Cuba)," Andrea says in regards to a percussion class she took once in Cuba. "In Cuba, the first thing they ask you is if you can play the clave. Then they ask you to play the son clave, then the rumba clave. And that's how they separate the class. They don't care how well you can play the conga. If you don't know the clave, they put you into the beginning class."

In Austin, however, fans and curious onlookers often assume that since she often harmonizes with Rey, Barry, Francisco, and Matt, that she is a singer who plays the clave while not singing. Whereas, in her mind, "I play the clave and, since I'm on stage, I might as well sing."

As son is a mixture of different rhythms and influences, so too is Grupo Son Yuma, its members hailing from lands as far away as Horacio's homeland, Columbia, Michel's Puerto Rico, Francisco's Tamaulipas, and Barry and Andrea's Illinois, to our close neighbors: San Antonio for Rey and Dallas for Matt.

Grupo Son Yuma had their beginnings at the end of last year. Barry and Andrea had recently moved from Illinois, and had begun to look for a Cuban connection. They heard Rey announcing a Latin American radio program, called him, and the three of them connected. A month or two later, at a party, the speakers blew out, the music died, and so stepped in Rey, Barry, Andrea, Francisco, and Matt with an improvised jam session. Michel hooked up with the rest of the band through a friend who'd been playing bass with them but, while Michel stayed, the bass player later moved on to other projects. The rest, so they say, is history. They had their first gigs at Ruta Maya Coffee House, two shows in December, and then in '96, a show every couple of weeks or once a month. About the same time, the Continental Club began experimenting with different venues. Traditionally a country and blues club, the Continental gave Beto y los Fairlanes a chance to headline their Wednesday night show, taking the stage after 8 1/2 Souvenirs. By late February, Grupo Son Yuma found their spot and developed a niche in the Austin nightlife. Now, every Wednesday, you can be sure to see Grupo Son Yuma, dressed in their cream guayaberas and living their music on the stage of the Continental Club. And if you miss them on Wednesday nights, you can catch them at Borinquen on Friday nights or at Miguel's la Bodega on Saturdays, where the music and the dancing are just as hot.

For a month during the summer, however, you couldn't catch their show Wednesdays, Fridays, or any other day of the week as they took a sabbatical, a field trip so to speak, and left for Cuba. They stayed in La Havana and Santiago de Cuba, and there they learned from some of the best son players in Cuba. They returned revitalized and with experience under their belts. "There's a difference in just hearing and listening to the music and seeing it performed. We learned a lot from just watching how they handle situations on stage, how they play the music."

It wasn't until after they returned from Cuba that the band began harmonizing: "It didn't matter how well you could sing," says Rey Arteaga. "If you were on stage, you sang. Everyone sang." And watching them on stage, most everyone, whether miked or not, sings. Michel, Matt, Barry, and Francisco add their rich tenors to the mix while Andrea's cool alto fills in any gaps. The harmony adds a carnaval-esque feel to the music and encourages dancers and listeners to sing along as well. According to Michel, the dark-haired trumpet player from Puerto Rico, "A lot of the regulars know most of our songs by now. It's impressive to us that week after week we'll see the same faces in the crowd of dancers, sometimes two or three times a week. And they're singing along."

I ask them how Cuba received an American band playing Cuban son. "Pretty well," Andrea says. "They liked us a lot, if only because we're playing such an old style of music. We're young and Americans, and here we are playing son, a style of music which is disappearing in a lot of Cuba. Sure, they had a lot of suggestions and told us up front we needed work, but they were willing to help us and let us play with them."

And coming back to the states, the improvements are well appreciated and on-going. "We had to assimilate everything when we got back, but now, I think the changes are noticeable, and you can tell we're playing son."

Rey's voice echoes over the microphones: "We're Grupo Son Yuma, playing classical Cuban dance music of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s."

But who dances son? Rey says, "The only people you'll see dancing son are Cubans. And not many of them even dance it. Most people, at our shows, dance salsa or merengue, and it works fine. Son's steps are like salsa, except you move your feet on a different beat, which gives the dance a different feel." Of course, every member of Son Yuma can dance son, and during breaks, when salsa is playing over the speakers, you can sometimes catch Barry and Andrea dancing salsa together. And if you ask nicely, any one of the members will give you an improvised lesson on how to dance, if not son, at least salsa, because it's difficult not to dance at a Grupo Son Yuma show. The music is infectious: the rhythms force your feet to tap and your hips to sway, and the dancing itself, made of intimate looks, twirls, spins, and fluid motion across the floor, smells of tropical nights spent in La Havana, captures your imagination, and drags you onto the dance floor.

And you won't be alone. Latin-mania continues to grow in Austin as bands like De Orfeu, El Clave, Cula du Cafe, and Quarteto TeMere, keep playing two to three nights a week. Old dance favorites like Susanna Sharpe and the Samba Police and Brave Combo, with their nuclear polka and radioactive cha-cha-cha, still come around to La Zona Rosa and Liberty Lunch. Calle Ocho and Miguel's la Bodega offer salsa lessons, Calle Ocho on Thursday and Friday nights, Miguel's on Thursday nights. And not all of the latin music is dance. Wednesday nights are also latin music nights at Flipnotics. Now Correo Aereo play their traditional and original South American music from Venezuela, Mexico and Argentina for your listening pleasure. So it's possible on any given week to relax to traditional Latin American ballads Wednesday evenings at El Sol, bop over to the Continental Club and listen to traditional Cuban dance music, learn salsa and merengue on Thurdays and Fridays, and dance the rest of the weekend, or the rest of your life away at any number of Latin dance clubs around downtown Austin. And somehow, the Latin flair works its way into other non-Latin groups around Austin: Citizen Lane with its mournful, Latin trumpet serenades performed by Isaac Pena amidst a grooving-jazz-funk repetoire and the Voodoo Dolls with a light, but distinctive clave beat behind many of their songs, to name two.

As for the future of Grupo Son Yuma, they are concentrating most of their efforts on expanding their repetoire. "We feel we owe it to the people who come out and see us to give them new music to dance to." Their goal is another night's performance worth of music, their performances usually lasting three and a half to four hours. They also hope to expand their stage experience and play at Cedar Street, Stubb's Bar-B-Q, The Gingerman, and other clubs around Austin. "But we haven't really given much thought to recording a CD mainly because we're concentrating so much on the music. In Cuba, all they did was perform play music so people could see them and dance or just listen. Nobody was out to record their music, just to play it and play it the best they could." So for now, Austin's going to have to satisfy its Cuban hunger the old fashioned way in living color.

Anyone interested in good Latin American music recordings, here are some labels to check out: Nimbus Records, Corason, and Timbau.