Rodríguez's chief innovation, his interpretation of the
son montuno, established the basic template for Cuban popular dance music and
salsa that continues to this day. "It took fifty years for Latin music to catch up with what Arsenio was doing in the 1940s"—Kevin Moore (2007: web).
Clave-based structure and offbeat emphasis The decades of the 1920s and 1930s were a period which produced some of the most beautiful and memorable melodies of the son genre. At the same time, the rhythmic component had become increasingly deemphasized, or in the opinion of some, "watered-down". Rodríguez brought a strong rhythmic emphasis back into the son. His compositions are clearly based on the
key pattern known in Cuba as
clave, a Spanish word for 'key', or 'code'. When clave is written in two measures, as shown above, the measure with three strokes is referred to as the
three-side, and the measure with two strokes—the
two-side. When the chord progression begins on the three-side, the song, or phrase is said to be in
3-2 clave. When it begins on the two-side, it's in
2-3 clave. The 2-3 bass line of "Dame un cachito pa' huele" (1946) coincides with the three-side of the clave's five-note pattern. David García identifies the accents of "and-of-two" (in cut-time) on the three-side, and the "and-of-four" (in cut-time) on the two-side of the clave, as crucial contributions of Rodríguez's music. The two offbeats are present in the following 2-3 bass line from Rodríguez's "Mi chinita me botó" (1944). Moore points out that Rodríguez's conjunto introduced the two-celled bass
tumbaos, that moved beyond the simpler, single-cell
tresillo structure. This type of bass line has a specific alignment to clave, and contributes melodically to the composition. Rodríguez's brother Raúl Travieso recounted, Rodríguez insisted that his bass players make the bass "sing." In other words, Rodríguez is a creator of the bass
riff. '''Breaks ('cierres')''' Rodríguez's "Juventud amaliana" (1946) contains an example of one of his rhythmically dynamic unison breaks, strongly rooted in clave. Moore is referring to the second and third measures of the break in the previous example. Here is that figure in relation to 2-3 clave. When the pattern is used as a type of block chord guajeo, as in "
Oye Como Va", it's referred to as
ponchando.
Layered guajeos Rodríguez introduced the idea of layered
guajeos (typical Cuban
ostinato melodies)—an interlocking structure consisting of multiple
contrapuntal parts. This aspect of the
son's modernization can be thought of as a matter of "re-Africanizing" the music. Helio Orovio recalls: "Arsenio once said his trumpets played figurations the 'Oriente' tres-guitarists played during the improvisational part of el son" (1992: 11). Oriente is the easternmost province of Cuba, where the son was born. It is common practice for treseros to play a series of
guajeo variations during their solos. Perhaps it was only natural then that it was Rodríguez, the tres master, who conceived of the idea of layering these variations on top of each other. The following example is from the "diablo" section of Rodríguez's "Kila, Quique y Chocolate" (1950). The excerpt consists of four interlocking guajeos: piano (bottom line), tres (second line), 2nd and 3rd trumpets (third line), and 1st trumpet (fourth line). 2-3 Clave is shown for reference (top line). Notice that the piano plays a single celled (single measure) guajeo, while the other guajeos are two-celled. It's common practice to combine single and double-celled ostinatos in Afro-Cuban music.
Expansion of the son conjunto The denser rhythmic weave of Rodríguez's music required the addition of more instruments. Rodríguez added a second, and then, third trumpet—the birth of the Latin horn section. He made the bold move of adding the
conga drum, the quintessential
Afro-Cuban instrument. Today, we are so used to seeing conga drums in Latin bands, and that practice began with Rodríguez. His
bongo player used a large, hand-held
cencerro ('cowbell') during
montunos (call-and-response chorus sections). Rodríguez also added a variety of rhythms and
harmonic concepts to enrich the son, the
bolero, the
guaracha and some fusions, such as the bolero-son. Similar changes had been made somewhat earlier by the
Lecuona Cuban Boys, who (because they were mainly a touring band) had less influence in Cuba. The overall 'feel' of the Rodríguez conjunto was more African than other Cuban conjuntos.
Piano guajeos Rodríguez took the pivotal step of replacing the guitar with the piano, which greatly expanded the contrapuntal and harmonic possibilities of Cuban popular music. The piano
guajeo for "Dame un cachito pa' huele" (1946) completely departs from both the generic son guajeo and the song's melody. The pattern marks the clave by accenting the backbeat on the two-side. Moore observes: "Like so many aspects of Arsenio's music, this miniature composition is decades ahead of its time. It would be forty years before groups began to consistently apply this much creative variation at the guajeo level of the arranging process" (2009: 41). The piano guajeo for "Jumba" (a.k.a. "Zumba") (1951) is firmly aligned with clave, but also has a very strong nengón flavor — something which had rarely, or never, been used in Havana popular music. While Rodríguez was not from Oriente province (where nengón and changüí are played), he had a thorough knowledge of many folkloric styles and his creative partner, the pianist/composer Luis "Lilí" Martínez Griñán, in fact came from that part of the island.
Diablo, the proto-mambo? Leonardo Acosta is not convinced by Rodríguez's claim to have invented the mambo, if by
mambo Rodríguez meant the big-band arrangements of
Dámaso Pérez Prado. Rodríguez was not an arranger: his lyrics and musical ideas were worked over by the group's arranger. The compositions were published with just the minimal bass and treble piano lines. To achieve the big-band mambo such as by Pérez Prado,
Machito,
Tito Puente or
Tito Rodríguez requires a full orchestration where the trumpets play counterpoint to the rhythm of the saxophones. This, a fusion of Cuban with big-band jazz ideas, is not found in Rodríguez, whose musical forms are set in the traditional categories of Cuban music. While it is true that the mambo of the 1940s, and 1950s contains elements not present in Rodríguez's music, there is considerable evidence that the contrapuntal structure of the mambo began in the conjunto of Arsenio Rodríguez. While working in the
charanga Arcaño y Sus Maravillas,
Orestes López "Macho" and his brother
Israel López "Cachao" composed "Mambo" (1938), the first piece to use the term. A prevalent theory is that the López brothers were influenced by Rodríguez's use of layered guajeos (called
diablo), and introduced the concept into the charanga's string section with their historical composition. As Ned Sublette observes: "Arsenio maintained till the end of his life that the mambo — the big band style that exploded in 1949 — came out of his diablo, the repeating figures that the trumpets in the band played. Arsenio claimed to have already been doing that in the late 1930s" (2004: 508). As Rodríguez himself asserts: "In 1934, I was experimenting with a new sound which I fully developed in 1938." Max Salazar concurs: "It was Arsenio Rodríguez's band that used for the first time the rhythms which today are typical for every mambo" (1992: 10). In the late 1940s
Pérez Prado codified the contrapuntal structure of the mambo within a horn-based big band format. == Style ==