Ramblings of a Loud Pacifist Redux

Have you ever heard someone say music is their life and can’t help but eye them askew for forcing you to bear their aggravating attempt at carving out in the crust of our collective existence a nook that is uniquely like them? You try to conceal, or at the very least slickly adjust your gnarled lips while you internally exclaim, “We all love music, it’s a pretty big part of a lot of people’s lives. Please, do shut up.” Every single one of us has music that carries deep emotional meaning. A lot of people can associate certain songs with momentous occasions in their lives that trigger memories with just a few notes. And I’m willing to bet most of us can remember what song was playing during many firsts. There was no music during mine, although there were Al Pacino impersonations.

With all of that in mind, and noting the incongruity, I still dare say music is a VERY big part of my life, and I’m not talking about a passive relationship. I’ve been dancing now, with instruction, for about 8 years. But even before that, I think many would agree that I was not me if I was not dancing whenever music played. There were few school dances I would miss, and I took every opportunity at house parties to be the first and last off the makeshift dance floor. I even performed for excited, drunk attendees several times during New Year’s Eve parties over the years. My stepmom thought it was of utter importance that we showcase our talents during the holidays while we put on a show for our guests. And while that could’ve been traumatizing to a fainter heart, I thank her for the audacity of giving me a labor turned to love. 

In the last two years, I got particularly obsessed with dance, specifically Cuban popular dance, after having gone to my first class with what is now endearingly called Son Robao. I’d been closely following these classes, the clips they posted online, and the instructor for a while, too. Ok…I was following him for three years before I finally felt emboldened enough to show up to his classes, and he doesn’t let me live it down. After having gone to a concert for one of my favorite Cuban bands and seeing the students I’d been watching in all the videos do what I’d been admiring from afar, I was finally convinced that I had to check it out. 

A week later I was pulling up to a rainy cul-de-sac looking for parking at the studio, which was actually more of a tent adhered to the house. I felt a little awkward because there were few students, and they all seemed to know each other and have established rapport. It was also pretty humid in the little attached studio, and the class was taught in something called “contratiempo” which I’d only ever heard about, and certainly had no practice doing with my feet. But I trudged on and survived my first class, and I speak in very understating terms when I tritely say that it has made all the difference. I had found my truth and I had seen the light in a version of this beautiful music and dance not obfuscated by the frivolous trappings or spurious routines of what had recently revealed itself to me as moth-eaten mimicry.

At one point, I was taking between three and five dancing classes per week, and going out dancing socially at least once (on a bad week). While spontaneity thrills me, I’m also a very ritualistic person, and I grew accustomed to my tacos and IPA after class from my favorite watering hole, right before moseying on down to the club down the street. It’s usually overrun with tourists as it’s in the heart of Little Havana, and must cater to that crowd. But on several nights a week they play music you can do more than twerk, bounce, or nod to. Those many classes I’ve invested my time and money in (some might say squandered, but who needs them?) have given me the foundation I never had before and the ability to truly connect with the instruments. And during those extracurricular outings, through trial and error, and eventually very fulfilling dances with some of the very best, I’ve learned to dance with the music in a way I never even fathomed possible.

I think you get it, right? Music and dancing are kind of a big deal for me. But unfortunately, unlike many who have the same affliction as me, I never picked up an instrument. Not a useful one anyway. Cello is my favorite, and I can listen to it for hours but I discovered it way past the prime age one can more easily master a string instrument. I would’ve loved to have learned to play either the piano or guitar, and even had several ex-boyfriends try to teach me. But all I ever partially grasped was the recorder in elementary school and no offense to Ms. Vilarchao, but they don’t exactly get the people going these days. I think perhaps because of this I hold on to dancing even more so, because my feet are the only true instrument I’ve ever known how to use, and I am always seeking to learn how to play more virtuously. 

Well, and now, I had the clave. Or rather, now I had the rhythm, because I’d always had some form of the instrument. Clave, meaning key, or secret, is the basis of all Cuban music, and to a larger extent, Latin music. It is a deceptively simple bell pattern of five strokes, but it permeates every meter, and even when the beat is implicit, rest assured that every instrument adheres to it, whether it’s a son, a timba, or a rumba. Nevertheless, when it is there, its captivating pulse cuts through the encompassing sonance and it unfolds as the metronome built into the melody. But the best part is, you can play it on any surface that allows, even one as rudimentary as your own two hands. It is the most crucial element in the song, and simultaneously the most basic instrument you can have, as fate would have it. 

Regardless, I wanted my own set of wooden claves. I wanted to hear that bright, crisp, high-pitched click of the sticks. Yes, sticks– imagine two literal cylinders with the diameter of about the inside of a paper towel roll. I had also wanted to sing in a rumba since I first heard a local prodigy at a party when I was 15 years old. I had seen the power that his position held in the semi-ceremonious assembly and the singer who has the floor, usually has the obligation of carrying the clave. Still, I had never foreseen that ambition materialized until a friend one day agreed to give some fellow dancers and me a fundamental lesson on Cuban percussion. He taught us what type of motif is invoked on separate occasions, and how to hold the resting clave to ensure the resonating chamber created by the hand below was optimal for producing the cherished rich tone. And sure, hands suffice to transmit that ethereal refrain fondly defined as the magic of 3+2, but I resolved I had to get my own tangible reminder that I would someday actively participate in something so extraordinary. I didn’t want to be like a friend of sorts from earlier years that displayed many instruments to yield an impression of allure. I had to practice not just the clave, but singing while playing, the true challenge and my long desired form of being an earnest contributor to the most sublime experience I’ve ever partaken in. 

So after all this time spent obsessing over this music, imagine my surprise when I show my dad my newly acquired claves and he comes back out of his room after he leaves me mid-sentence with what I then learned were his father’s own set, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. They’re a little shorter than the eight inches of mine. The pitch is a little lower due to their begetter being of a denser cedar than the ambiguously designated “white wood” of mine, and they are clearly a little worn from more than just a few impromptu yet indispensable jam sessions. But they’re truly beautiful and I was instantly transfixed by them. When I asked why he’d never shown or even told me about these claves that had belonged to a man I’d never met but honored with my name, he sincerely replied that it had never occurred to him.

That weekend I made sure to ask my grandmother about this newly found piece of my puzzle. Now, the way this woman tells a story you know it’s a good one when she gets to a point where she can barely get out the last part of the sentence because she’s suppressing her chuckles so severely, that what little air she’s letting out becomes acutely high pitched, as if fearing that letting herself talk fully will erupt in the imminent, inevitable laughter. And of course, she always laughs in the end, often on the verge of tears. In between giggles and gasps she manages to tell me about one of the first dates her late husband had asked her out on when they were teenagers. Allegedly, he had duped her into going to a provincial shindig by promising a stellar guitar performance by the very one standing before her. 

Abuela has never been one to turn down a promising night of dancing and fun, so when his plan actually worked and she showed up he realized he had few options to seal the deal and not look like a complete fool. A six-stringed sonero he was not, but a coward neither, and since he promised a performance, he aimed to deliver one by any means necessary. He quickly analyzed the situation and found the shortest, safest route to potential redemption was to take the claves from the guy who was about to start playing them. At the end of the night, he had won her over not with skill, which he never managed to garner with age either, but with the moxie to perform for her at any cost. And he would go on to play the claves at almost every family gathering for years to come before his untimely passing in 1987. I’m still not sure if the last part of my grandmother’s story was true or mythified, but the origin serves me less than the journey as I now had a new chance to reclaim an exclusive link I had left for irrecoverable. 

Despite being born on the forsaken island I’d never felt the need to cultivate an affinity for Cuba before my renewed musical sojourn. And in the same way, I now also suddenly longed to reestablish a unique connection I had felt lost, this time with my grandfather. Incidentally, several years before, my cousin and his wife had been expecting a baby and wanted to give him my grandfather’s name, i.e. my middle name. I had always been very proud to carry that name, and was very territorial of it, as it was the only thing I felt I had obtained from a man who so many loved, and whose spectacle of a charm I was never fortunate to presence. In the end, I let Angel have his name on the condition that I would be his godmother when the time came to baptize him, in the effort of keeping the thread still running through me. When I gave the name away, I didn’t think of it right away, but with time I realized I had relinquished my only inheritance to speak of. I use relinquished very loosely, of course,  because they could’ve given him the name and I would not have been able to do anything. I also say it selfishly, because I pretended it was something that was mine and could not be shared in the first place. 

But alas, here was a new possibility. It seemed to me serendipitous that in a family of decent musicians neither my grandfather nor I could play any other instrument, and had therefore chosen the clave as our minor but genuine pursuit of sharing in the literal song of the party and the microcosmic one of the human experience. That more than a name we also shared a lack for musical talent and an equally considerable undying love for said music despite our shortcomings. If I had to guess while presuming that these things can be genetically passed on, I would say my love for dancing I got from my grandmother, but that innate desire to engage in the sonorous manifestation was definitely a gift, and a curse, handed down from Angel. Needless to say, I won’t be parting with these claves. While for now and for his sake, I will let my dad hold onto them lest he too feel he is losing a part of himself, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on my birthright heirloom. And as for white wood claves, I anticipate Seraph and Cherub living a full life with me before eventually reincarnating as the sweet sustenance of yet another fool with a senselessly addictive penchant for syncopated percussion.