In composer Howard Goodall’s TV programme How Music Works he makes what seems a startling claim. He says that between about 1960 and 1970, Western popular music adopted the syncopation patterns of Cuban son, wherein the notes of the melody and sometimes also the bass notes are “pushed” slightly ahead of the beat (syncopation behind the beat was already well-established). He claimed that the change swept through popular music so completely that today music which doesn’t have son-like syncopation sounds wrong, “cheesy and weird” as he put it. To illustrate, he had a singer perform 70’s hit “Killing Me Softly” first without the syncopation and then in its familiar syncopated form. And yes, it sounded rather plodding when sung with no syncopation at all, like “I heard. He. Sang. A. Good. Song. I heard. He. Had. A style.”
This is the first I’ve heard of this supposed significant rhythmic shift in popular music. And older songs don’t sound to me as pedestrian as the rather contrived example of non-syncopation that he gave. So is his theory widely known and accepted among musicologists?
Most sources trace it back through American jazz to African music, which makes sense because that would also be the source of the Cuban jazz sound.
Did popular music incorporate black sounds after 1960? Sure did. But that had started much earlier and there’s little evidence that Cuban music was especially influential in that transfer.
I’ve seen some of Howard Goodall’s programs on classical music, and I liked them very much. Even so, keep in mind that all television history is enormously compressed and simplified and that corners are easily cut when there is a point to be made.
It strikes me as a completely barmy theory. IMHO, obviously. It fails on two points - that of syncopation hardly being a 60s invention, and so many more obvious routes of influence than Cuban music.
If he was merely making a parallel with Cuban rhythms for demonstrative purposes, however, then it’s a good one.
Well, he wasn’t saying that there was no syncopation before ca. 1960, rather that Cuban style syncopation became very widespread, universal even. He had already talked about jazz syncopation and its roots in African and other musics. He was quite explicitly crediting Cuban son as the origin of this particular modern type of syncopation, not just using it as an example of rhythmic influences on Western music.
I wouldn’t dispute for a second that many varieties of Latin music were popular in the 1940s and 1950s and that they were part of the stew that became rock. One of the main reasons I like rock is that it incorporated every possible type of music that existed to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The purists who insist that rock is just one type of music have always infuriated me.
But Cuban son? In the 1960s? I’ve read a lot on the history of rock and popular music and I don’t remember that combination arising.
The only thing I found online is an enthusiast’s site that talks about the habanera beat in rockabilly. This is not the same as son, I don’t believe, and it’s a decade earlier.
An Arthur Murray dance site gives Rumba as the Americanized version of son but dates it back to the 1930s. But
In short, I don’t believe it. Latin influences, yes. Syncopation, yes. Son in the 60s, no.
Maybe this should be moved to Cafe Society for more exposure.
Then I guess I don’t get the point of this illustration:
I realize the OP didn’t produce the show, and maybe isn’t even conveying what was actually communicated, but I’d expect the relevant comparison to be between the kind of syncopation exigent before 1960 and the current version. What am I missing?
Also, this
doesn’t describe syncopation, really. OpenStax (syncopation is accenting beats that are normally unaccented).
No, it’s not what I thought syncopation meant either, but that is the term Goodall used in the programme. I think the point of “Killing Me Softly” was to clearly demonstrate to a general audience what son syncopation is, by contrasting it to non-syncopation, rather than to other syncopations or off-the-beat rhythmic styles or whatever you want to call them, that, as I said, Goodall had already mentioned.
It certainly describes one form of syncopation, in my book. Specifically the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, which was nearby: “Syncopation - Device used…to vary position of the stress on notes so as to avoid regular rhythm”. From this thread, I’ve learnt at least one thing - that Killing Me Softly is a good example to use when teaching kids what syncopation means
Cuba was embargoed starting in 1962. There was no way for anyone in the US to actually hear Cuban music after that.
I’ve never heard any rock musician of the 60s ever mentioning the Cuban son as one of his influences. Can anyone provide a cite saying so?
Prior to 1960, there was latin music (e.g., the Cha Cha), but that was primarily dance music, and, by the time rock came along, it was considered very passe.
The most influential group of that time, the Beatles, never had any connection with Cuban music. I’ve never seen any account that Lennon, McCartney et. al. had ever heard of it.
For this to be true, Goodall has to do more than show similarities; he has to provide a chain of evidence that links the Cuban music to the musicians of the 60s.
Cuban music could have influenced American music indirectly. Songwriters are not necessarily conscious of all their influences.
His idea is that early 20th century son led to other Cuban styles such as, I quote, “danzon, rumba, guaguanco, yambu, bossa nova, mambo, conga, cha cha cha, and eventually salsa”, all of which have the characteristic slightly premature melody which, he says, is now standard in Western popular song.
Certainly not, but you’d think that someone would mention it. Is there any popular musician who has ever said this was an influence? AFAIK, no rock musician has ever talked about how much they used to love listening to son music as a kid. Yet plenty have talked about the blues influence, which has no connection with son.
And what is the chain? How did the son music get to the Rolling Stones, for instance?
But the music of the 60s was a reaction against all those styles (and by the time rock came along, they were long dead as a popular music form, anyway). Only bossa nova had any relevance in the 60s, by which time rock had taken over (and bossa nova was just a short-lived fad).
Now, that’s just silly. Did they send Desi Arnaz back to Cuba?
Cuban music was alive and well in the U.S. after 1962, especially in Miami. Cuban radio stations could be picked up in Florida. And Cuban music recorded on non-Cuban record labels was quite legally imported into the U.S.
I’ve seen that series (which was otherwise excellent), including that programme, and still have the same amazement that the influence of early jazz musicians - especially Louis Armstrong - was being ignored. A few brief listenings to music of that time period clearly show a shift in melodic rhythm including the “push” type of syncopation Goodall was attributing to Latin American styles.
If anyone’s in any doubt, listen to Satchmo playing with fellow trumpet player and mentor King Oliver in early recordings, and compare that with recordings made a little later, when Louis was really starting to make his own mark on jazz. He loosens up, gains confidence, and starts pulling the notes back and forth to make the music swing. Before long, every jazz musician of note was doing the same thing, with some exceptions.
The Latin American influence Goodall claimed to me is a later, and faulty, explanation of how music came to start swinging. The reality (in my opinion) is more mundane: the African legacy of polyrhythmic, in particular two-against-three, playing was at last finding its place in the mainstream. Louis pinned down and played what he’d been hearing all his life, and was not nervous about asserting that influence over the traditional, marching street-band style of “one-two-one-two” favoured by white listeners.
Loose and triplet-based playing in popular American music long predates Goodall’s strange assumption of some sort of 1960s, Latin-American-based epiphany.
(On a personal note, I’m not particularly entranced by early Louis Armstrong, simply on a matter of individual taste, but listen to some 1930s/1940s Duke Ellington and you’ll get the message; Louis long remained the master of timing; I just prefer Duke’s mastery of harmony, pure melody and composition.)
Latin-American influence on American music? I don’t think so. That came much later, and was a convergence rather than an antecedent.
A similar claim to that mentioned in the OP was made by latin music scholar John Storm Roberts in his book The Latin Tinge, wherein he states
“Throughout the 1960s… in the words of salsa bandleader Ray Barretto, ‘The whole basis of American rhythm… changed from the old dotted-note jazz shuffle rhythm to a straightahead straight-eighth approach, which is latin.’”
