This is the third volume on the piano style of César "Pupy" Pedroso, covering his piano style with Los Van Van from 1989 until his departure in 2001. The book is also very much about the history of Los Van Van, with much attention paid to Juan Formell, Changuito, Mayito Rivera, Robertón Hernández, Pedrito Calvo and other key figures in the group. The book is organized by album, covering the last seven albums made before Pupy left the group: Crónicas, Aquí el que baila gana, Azúcar, Lo último en vivo, Ay Dios ampárame, Te pone la cabeza mala and Llegó Van Van. The audio product has 180 tracks, with the bass and piano separated to the left and right channels respectively. This is the twelfth volume in a instructional series set to become the new standard for contemporary Latin piano styles. 139 pages (139 páginas) with 180 audio tracks (180 pistas).

Special notes about Beyond Salsa Piano Volume 12:

** Beyond Salsa Piano Volume 12 is the twelfth in a series of instructional methods composed of an eBook with audio tracks. The eBook and audio tracks are sold separately. The eBook is a personalized pdf download compatible with Adobe Acrobat (more eBook info here).

** All 180 audio tracks have stereo separation: the left channel has the bass tumbao part and the right channel has the piano part.

Volume 12 of the Beyond Salsa Piano series is the third of four being written about César “Pupy” Pedroso, and covers songs and piano tumbaos covering his piano style with Los Van Van from 1989 until his departure in 2001. The book is also very much about the history of Los Van Van, with much attention paid to Juan Formell, Changuito, Mayito Rivera, Robertón Hernández, Pedrito Calvo and other key figures in the group. The book is organized by album, covering the last seven albums made before Pupy left the group: Crónicas, Aquí el que baila gana, Azúcar, Lo último en vivo, Ay Dios ampárame, Te pone la cabeza mala and Llegó Van Van.

The period from 1983 to 1989 was a remarkably stable one for Los Van Van. They had no major personnel or stylistic changes and released a hit album every year, like clockwork. The last, and to my ear the best, of these albums was Crónicas, recorded in February 1989, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union sent Cuba careening into the chaotic, experimental, economically disastrous and musically triumphant decade of the 1990s.

An inveterate Beatles fan, Juan Formell was enamored of the idea of imbuing each album with its own personality and narrative arc. Crónicas is one of his experiments with what we’ll call the “bookend” approach – beginning and ending an album with powerful tracks that combine in some way with a theme and reprise to create thematic unity, a satisfying climax, and a sense of closure. The original “concept album” was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and even that iconic masterpiece has not fully escaped the complaints of some critics that a dramatically paced tracklist and a reprise of the opening are insufficient to warrant the lofty claims of conceptual integrity put forth by those championing the album. The musical structure of Crónicas is a variant of the Sgt. Pepper’s template – placing its strongest material at the beginning and end, and then bookending the whole affair with two different and compelling versions of the theme song, in this case, Yo sé que van van. But beyond the tracklist and presentation, it’s the songwriting itself that provides Crónicas with its most convincing claim of “concept album” status. The album’s title announces its mission statement – the popular song as a social chronicle1 – and each song showcases a different aspect of this approach.

BSP Volume 12 features dozens of excellent photographs by Tom Ehrlich, Patrick Bonnard and others top photographic artists.

Beyond Salsa Piano is a history and anthology of the role of the piano in the Cuban rhythm section – from its first appearance to the present. In a broader sense, it’s a study of the tumbao – the art of creating music from layers of repeating rhythmic and melodic phrases. Whether these syncopated figures are called tumbaos, guajeos, montunos, riffs or vamps, this Afro-Cuban concept lies at the heart of nearly every popular music genre from salsa to rock , funk, R&B, hiphop and jazz.

While presented as a set of method books, the series doubles as a history course and record collecting guide for listeners, dancers, and players of instruments other than the piano.

Perhaps the most important goal of the series is to provide a comprehensive understanding of how tumbaos are constructed, their central role in the texture of Latin music of all eras, and the endless possibilities they provide for creative composing and arranging.

Click here for a pdf sample of the Beyond Salsa Piano Volume 12 eBook.

Email the author = kevin [at] timba [dot] com

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