CLAVE - The key to Afro-Caribbean rhythm
Some instruments can tell a very involved story. Instruments, like the people who play them, travel. One of the side effects of mass migration, war, exploration, and international trade is the adoption of the instruments, the sounds, and especially the rhythms of one group by another. Claves, two wooden sticks that are played by striking one against the other, are the product of perhaps the greatest human upheaval in history, the accidental discovery of the Americas by Europeans. In the islands of the Caribbean, within a very short time, the indigenous population was nearly wiped out, and European settlers began importing vast numbers of slaves from Africa to work their plantations. Music and dance, and especially drumming were of central importance to the social and religious rituals of the people brought to the Americas from Africa, and this significance remained as their music evolved under the circumstances of slavery. In Cuba, the mostly West African slaves were prohibited from worshipping in their traditional ways and from speaking their own languages. In response, slaves developed a form of worship called Santeria in which the gods of the Yoruban religion from Nigeria were given the names of Christian saints, and were prayed to in the old ways. Through this confrontation between African and European musical cultures, Afro-Cuban music was born.
In addition to being an instrument, clave is a rhythmic pattern, derived from a pattern central to West African music, and can be understood as the organizing principle of Afro-Caribbean music. The term clave is Spanish for key, and also refers to the musical clef. It has been further suggested that it takes its name from the Spanish clavo, meaning nail, and that the instrument originated as the wooden pegs used in ship building. Clave is a pattern consisting of two uneven parts, a strong, or fuerte measure containing three beats, and a weak, or debil measure of two beats. When played in that order it is referred to as three-two clave, and when played in reverse it is called two-three. This binary structure is traced back to a 6/8 pattern that similarly functions as the basis for polyrhythmic activity found in the music of Yoruban culture. In Cuba, two main versions of clave have evolved, son clave and rumba clave, which are illustrated below. This basic rhythmic idea, linked directly back to its African origins, is the foundation of nearly all Latin music. Around it revolve all of the other elements of the music, including the melodic and harmonic ideas which are more closely associated with their European sources. Clave is in effect the pivot around which these different cultures can musically coexist, and one which finds its way into many other styles of music today, from Brazil through the Caribbean and into the U.S. where clave can be found in jazz, blues, rock (the Bo Diddley beat, for example), and now hip-hop. As technology fosters ever more rapid cultural diffusion, one imagines that clave will continue to travel.