Grooves and Waves: Cyclicity and Narrativity in Cuban Timba Piano

Since the early 1990s, Cuba has developed a popular dance music genre known as timba. Influenced by structures, instrumentation and song forms from earlier Cuban genres, timba also incorporates elements from Cuban folkloric music, American jazz, and funk. During the call-and-response montuno sections of timba arrangements, repeating piano tumbaos balance cyclicity and narrativity (vamps or ostinati) cooperate with percussion, horns, and vocals to form interlocking grooves. Focusing on the piano's role within the timba rhythm section, I trace the development of pianistic gestural and textural vocabularies, exploring how the piano's ensemble role interrelates with those of bass, percussion, horns, and vocals, through a genre-based historicized lens.