Les Baxter
Leslie Thompson Baxter was an American musician and composer. After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica; some of his many credits were questioned by Nelson Riddle and others, but Baxter said these claims were part of a smear campaign. Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. From 1943 on he played baritone saxophone for the Freddie Slack big band. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer. At the age of 23 he joined Mel Tormé's Mel-Tones, singing on Artie Shaw records such as "What Is This Thing Called Love?". Baxter turned to arranging and conducting for Capitol Records in 1950, conducted the orchestra in two early Nat King Cole hits, "Mona Lisa" and "Too Young". In 1953 he scored his first movie, the sailing travelogue Tanga Tika. With his own orchestra, he released a number of hits including "Ruby", "Unchained Melody", "The Poor People of Paris" and is remembered for a version of "Sinner Man", definitively setting the sound with varying tempos, orchestral flourishes, wailing background vocals.
"Unchained Melody" was the first million seller for Baxter, was awarded a gold disc. "The Poor People of Paris" sold over one million copies. He achieved success with concept albums of his own orchestral suites: Le Sacre Du Sauvage, Festival Of The Gnomes, Ports Of Pleasure, Brazil Now, the first three for Capitol and the fourth on Gene Norman's Crescendo label; the list of musicians on these recordings includes Clare Fischer. Baxter wrote the "Whistle" theme from the TV show Lassie. In the 1960s, he formed the Balladeers, a conservative folk group in suits that at one time featured a young David Crosby, he used some of the same singers from that group for a studio project called The Forum. They had a minor hit in 1967 with a rendition of "River is Wide" which implemented the Wall of Sound technique developed by Phil Spector, he worked in radio as musical director of The Halls of Ivy and the Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello shows. Like his counterparts Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifrin, Baxter worked in films in the 1960s and 1970s.
He worked on movie scores for B-movie studio American International Pictures where he composed scores for Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films and other horror and beach party films including House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, Muscle Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo. He composed a new score for the theatrical release of the 1970 horror film Cry of the Banshee after AIP rejected Wilfred Josephs original one. Howard W. Koch recalled that Baxter composed and recorded the entire score of The Yellow Tomahawk in a total of three hours for $5,000; when soundtrack work fell off in the 1980s, he scored music for theme parks such as SeaWorld. Baxter died in Newport Beach, California at the age of 73. Survived by his daughter Leslie, he was buried at Pacific View Memorial Park, in Corona del Mar, California. According to Milt Bernhart, Nelson Riddle was a ghost writer for Baxter when Baxter was working for Nat King Cole; this doesn't make any sense, because while Baxter was working as a conductor for Nat King Cole, he never was credited as a composer or arranger.
Bernhart states. Bernhart states that, while working for Baxter on recording a score for a Roger Corman film, it was apparent that Baxter could not conduct competently and "couldn't read the scores." According to Bernhart, "Someone else had written."Nelson Riddle held a grudge against Baxter for taking credit for Riddle's arrangements on two Nat King Cole hit recordings. According to André Previn, when collaborating once with Baxter, in the time Previn and Riddle had finished their parts, Baxter had written just one bar for woodwinds and included a note for the oboe that does not exist on the instrument. Gene Lees states that the exotica albums were written by Albert Harris and the material recorded with Yma Sumac was written by Pete Rugolo. According to Rugolo, he was paid $50 per arrangement to ghost for Les Baxter and that he "did a whole album with Yma Sumac"; this does not make much sense either, because arrangements and most compositions for the album were credited to Moises Vivanco on the original release.
Les Baxter was just credited as conductor, only in 1991 the German film documentary Yma Sumac - Hollywoods Inkaprinzessin claimed that most of the album was in fact ghostwritten by Les Baxter for Moises Vivanco. In a 1981 interview with Soundtrack magazine, Baxter said that these sorts of statements were the results of a smear campaign by a disgruntled orchestrator. According to Baxter, this resulted in Baxter being denied the chance to score for a major motion picture; the job went instead to Baxter's friend Bronisław Kaper. Baxter said that he would give his compositions to orchestrators to orchestrate to deal with a hectic schedule. Baxter's frequent conductor and orchestrator Hall Daniels said the criticisms were the result of "sour grapes" who held a grudge against Baxter for one reason or another. Skip Heller spent time working for and studying under Baxter where he witnessed various score sheets of original Baxter compositions, including Yma Sumac's "Xtabay" and "Tumpa". According to Heller, they were all in Baxter's own handwriting.
Furthermore, the Les Baxter papers, which are housed at the University of Arizona, show a significant number of arrangements in his own hand. Baxter, alongside Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, is celebrated as
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China and Japan, east of India, west of Papua New Guinea, north of Australia. Southeast Asia is bordered to the north by East Asia, to the west by South Asia and the Bay of Bengal, to the east by Oceania and the Pacific Ocean, to the south by Australia and the Indian Ocean; the region is the only part of Asia that lies within the Southern Hemisphere, although the majority of it is in the Northern Hemisphere. In contemporary definition, Southeast Asia consists of two geographic regions: Mainland Southeast Asia known as Indochina, comprising parts of Northeast India, Laos, Thailand and West Malaysia. Maritime Southeast Asia known as Nusantara, the East Indies and Malay Archipelago, comprises the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India, East Malaysia, the Philippines, East Timor, Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands. Taiwan is included in this grouping by many anthropologists; the region lies near the intersection of geological plates, with both heavy seismic and volcanic activities.
The Sunda Plate is the main plate of the region, featuring all Southeast Asian countries except Myanmar, northern Thailand, northern Laos, northern Vietnam, northern Luzon of the Philippines. The mountain ranges in Myanmar and peninsular Malaysia are part of the Alpide belt, while the islands of the Philippines are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Both seismic belts meet in Indonesia, causing the region to have high occurrences of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Southeast Asia covers about 4.5 million km2, 10.5% of Asia or 3% of earth's total land area. Its total population is about 8.5 % of the world's population. It is the third most populous geographical region in the world after East Asia; the region is culturally and ethnically diverse, with hundreds of languages spoken by different ethnic groups. Ten countries in the region are members of ASEAN, a regional organization established for economic, military and cultural integration amongst its members; the region, together with part of South Asia, was well known by Europeans as the East Indies or the Indies until the 20th century.
Chinese sources referred the region as 南洋, which means the "Southern Ocean." The mainland section of Southeast Asia was referred to as Indochina by European geographers due to its location between China and the Indian subcontinent and its having cultural influences from both neighboring regions. In the 20th century, the term became more restricted to territories of the former French Indochina; the maritime section of Southeast Asia is known as the Malay Archipelago, a term derived from the European concept of a Malay race. Another term for Maritime Southeast Asia is Insulindia, used to describe the region between Indochina and Australasia; the term "Southeast Asia" was first used in 1839 by American pastor Howard Malcolm in his book Travels in South-Eastern Asia. Malcolm only included the Mainland section and excluded the Maritime section in his definition of Southeast Asia; the term was used in the midst of World War II by the Allies, through the formation of South East Asia Command in 1943.
SEAC popularised the use of the term "Southeast Asia," although what constituted Southeast Asia was not fixed. However, by the late 1970s, a standard usage of the term "Southeast Asia" and the territories it encompasses had emerged. Although from a cultural or linguistic perspective the definitions of "Southeast Asia" may vary, the most common definitions nowadays include the area represented by the countries listed below. Ten of the eleven states of Southeast Asia are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, while East Timor is an observer state. Papua New Guinea has stated that it might join ASEAN, is an observer. Sovereignty issues exist over some territories in the South China Sea; some southern parts of Mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan, are considered as part of Southeast Asia by some authors. * Administrative centre in Putrajaya. Southeast Asia is geographically divided into two subregions, namely Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia. Mainland Southeast Asia includes: Maritime Southeast Asia includes: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India are geographically considered part of Maritime Southeast Asia.
Eastern Bangladesh and Northeast India have strong cultural ties with Southeast Asia and sometimes considered both South Asian and Southeast Asian. Sri Lanka has on some occasions been considered a part of Southeast Asia because of its cultural ties to mainland Southeast Asia; the rest of the island of New Guinea, not part of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, is sometimes included, so are Palau and the Northern Mariana Islands, which were all part of the Spanish East Indies with strong cultural and linguistic ties to the region the Philippines. The eastern half of Indonesia and East Timor are considered to be biogeographically part of Oceania due to its distinctive faunal features. New Guinea and its surrounding islands are geologically considered as a part of Australian continent, connected via the Sahul Shelf; the region
Piano
The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings; the word piano is a shortened form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from gravicembalo col piano e forte and fortepiano. The Italian musical terms piano and forte indicate "soft" and "loud" in this context referring to the variations in volume produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the greater the velocity of a key press, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, the louder the sound of the note produced and the stronger the attack; the name was created as a contrast to harpsichord, a musical instrument that doesn't allow variation in volume. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had smaller dynamic range.
An acoustic piano has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, which are strung under great tension on a heavy metal frame. Pressing one or more keys on the piano's keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings; the hammer rebounds from the strings, the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air; when the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs, by the use of pedals at the base of the instrument; the sustain pedal enables pianists to play musical passages that would otherwise be impossible, such as sounding a 10-note chord in the lower register and while this chord is being continued with the sustain pedal, shifting both hands to the treble range to play a melody and arpeggios over the top of this sustained chord.
Unlike the pipe organ and harpsichord, two major keyboard instruments used before the piano, the piano allows gradations of volume and tone according to how forcefully a performer presses or strikes the keys. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys, which are raised above the white keys, set further back on the keyboard; this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the "accidentals". More some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass; the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is classified as a percussion instrument rather than as a stringed instrument, because the strings are struck rather than plucked. There are two main types of piano: the upright piano.
The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music, art song, it is used in jazz and pop concerts. The upright piano, more compact, is the most popular type, as it is a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making and practice. During the 1800s, influenced by the musical trends of the Romantic music era, innovations such as the cast iron frame and aliquot stringing gave grand pianos a more powerful sound, with a longer sustain and richer tone. In the nineteenth century, a family's piano played the same role that a radio or phonograph played in the twentieth century. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many musical works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play and hear the popular pieces of the day in their home; the piano is employed in classical, jazz and popular music for solo and ensemble performances and for composing and rehearsals. Although the piano is heavy and thus not portable and is expensive, its musical versatility, the large number of musicians and amateurs trained in playing it, its wide availability in performance venues and rehearsal spaces have made it one of the Western world's most familiar musical instruments.
With technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, digital pianos have been developed. The electric piano became a popular instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music and rock music; the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments. Pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches; the first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dul
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a region of The Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, north of South America. Situated on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 700 islands, islets and cays; these islands form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean islands, consisting of the Greater Antilles on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east, are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which includes the Lucayan Archipelago; the Lucayans and, less Bermuda, are sometimes considered Caribbean despite the fact that none of these islands border the Caribbean Sea. In a wider sense, the mainland countries and territories of Belize, the Caribbean region of Colombia, the Yucatán Peninsula, Margarita Island, the Guyanas, are included due to their political and cultural ties with the region.
Geopolitically, the Caribbean islands are regarded as a subregion of North America and are organized into 30 territories including sovereign states, overseas departments, dependencies. From December 15, 1954, to October 10, 2010, there was a country known as the Netherlands Antilles composed of five states, all of which were Dutch dependencies. From January 3, 1958, to May 31, 1962, there was a short-lived political union called the West Indies Federation composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were British dependencies; the West Indies cricket team continues to represent many of those nations. The region takes its name from that of the Caribs, an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas; the two most prevalent pronunciations of "Caribbean" outside the Caribbean are, with the primary stress on the third syllable, with the stress on the second. Most authorities of the last century preferred the stress on the third syllable.
This is the older of the two pronunciations, but the stressed-second-syllable variant has been established for over 75 years. It has been suggested that speakers of British English prefer while North American speakers more use, but major American dictionaries and other sources list the stress on the third syllable as more common in American English too. According to the American version of Oxford Online Dictionaries, the stress on the second syllable is becoming more common in UK English and is considered "by some" to be more up to date and more "correct"; the Oxford Online Dictionaries claim that the stress on the second syllable is the most common pronunciation in the Caribbean itself, but according to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, the most common pronunciation in Caribbean English stresses the first syllable instead. The word "Caribbean" has multiple uses, its principal ones are political. The Caribbean can be expanded to include territories with strong cultural and historical connections to slavery, European colonisation and the plantation system.
The United Nations geoscheme for the Americas presents the Caribbean as a distinct region within the Americas. Physiographically, the Caribbean region is a chain of islands surrounding the Caribbean Sea. To the north, the region is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida and the Northern Atlantic Ocean, which lies to the east and northeast. To the south lies the coastline of the continent of South America. Politically, the "Caribbean" may be centred on socio-economic groupings found in the region. For example, the bloc known as the Caribbean Community contains the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the Republic of Suriname in South America and Belize in Central America as full members. Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the Atlantic Ocean, are associate members of the Caribbean Community; the Commonwealth of the Bahamas is in the Atlantic and is a full member of the Caribbean Community. Alternatively, the organisation called the Association of Caribbean States consists of every nation in the surrounding regions that lie on the Caribbean, plus El Salvador, which lies on the Pacific Ocean.
According to the ACS, the total population of its member states is 227 million people. The geography and climate in the Caribbean region varies: Some islands in the region have flat terrain of non-volcanic origin; these islands include Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Saint Croix, the Bahamas, Antigua. Others possess rugged towering mountain-ranges like the islands of Saint Martin, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Saint Thomas, Saint John, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Guadeloupe and Trinidad and Tobago. Definitions of the terms Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles vary; the Virgin Islands as part of the Puerto Rican bank are sometimes included with the Greater Antilles. The term Lesser Antilles is used to define an island arc that includes Grenada but excludes Trinidad and Tobago and the Leeward Antilles; the waters of the Caribbean Sea host large, migratory schools of fish and coral reef
Shangri-La
Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. Hilton describes Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise a mythical Himalayan utopia – a permanently happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live at Shangri-La are immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only slowly aging in appearance; the name evokes the imagery of the exoticism of the Orient. In the ancient Tibetan scriptures, the existence of seven such places is mentioned as Nghe-Beyul Khembalung. Khembalung is one of several beyuls believed to have been created by Padmasambhava in the 9th century as idyllic, sacred places of refuge for Buddhists during times of strife; the phrase "Shangri-La" most comes from the Tibetan ཞང་,"Shang" – a district of Ü-Tsang, north of Tashilhunpo" + རི, pronounced "ri", "Mountain" = "Shang Mountain" + ལ, Mountain Pass, which suggests that the area is accessed to, or is named by, "Shang Mountain Pass".
While the name Shangri-La is of recent origin, the concept existed. Some scholars believe that the Shangri-La story owes a literary debt to Shambhala, a mythical kingdom in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, sought by Eastern and Western explorers. Jewish sources describe a city named Luz, "in which the angel of death has no permission to enter for a thousand years: its citizens have the ability to live forever." The same description is given for a location named Kushta - based on the Aramaic word for truth. In this city, the only reason for death was. Academic scholars have debunked the myth of Shangri-La and argued that this has less to do with an unexplored place and is more connected to a fantasy of the Western world. In China, the poet Tao Yuanming of the Jin Dynasty described a kind of Shangri-La in his work The Tale of the Peach Blossom Spring; the story goes that there was a fisherman from Wuling, who came across a beautiful peach grove, he discovered happy and content people who lived cut off from the troubles in the outside world since the Qin Dynasty.
Shambhala is a core concept in Tibetan Buddhism that describes a realm of harmony between man and nature, connected with the Kalachakra or "wheel of time". The Shambhala ideal is described in detail in the Shambhala Sutra, a historical text written by the Sixth Panchen Lama which describes some of the Shambhala locations as being in Ngari, the western prefecture of Tibet. Folklore from the Altai Mountains describe Belukha Mountain as a gateway to Shambhala; the Kun Lun Mountains offer another possible place for valleys like the Shangri-La, since Hilton described the “Kuen-Lun” mountains as its location in the book, Hilton is not known to have visited or studied the area. Parts of the Kunlun Mountains lie within Ngari, mentioned in the Shambhala Sutra. In a New York Times interview in 1936, Hilton states that he used "Tibetan material" from the British Museum the travelogue of two French priests, Evariste Regis Huc and Joseph Gabet, to provide the Tibetan cultural and Buddhist spiritual inspiration for Shangri-La.
Huc and Gabet travelled a roundtrip between Beijing and Lhasa in 1844–1846 on a route more than 250 kilometres north of Yunnan. Their famous travelogue, first published in French in 1850, went through many editions in many languages. A popular "condensed translation" was published in England in 1928, at the time that Hilton would have been gathering inspiration for – or writing – Lost Horizon. Today various places, such as parts of southern Kham in northwestern Yunnan province, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian, claim the title. In modern China, Zhongdian county was renamed to attract tourists. Hilton visited the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan Kashmir, close to the Chinese border, a few years before Lost Horizon was published. Being an isolated green valley surrounded by mountains, enclosed on the western end of the Himalayas, it matches the description in the novel. However, because the Hunza Valley does not have Tibetan culture and lacks Buddhist religion, it could not have been the inspiration for the cultural context for Hilton's story.
Places like Sichuan and Tibet claim the real Shangri-La was in its territory. In 2001, Tibet Autonomous Region put forward a proposal that the three regions optimise all Shangri-La tourism resources and promote them as one. After failed attempts to establish a China Shangri-la Ecological Tourism Zone in 2002 and 2003, government representatives of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and Tibet Autonomous Region signed a declaration of co-operation in 2004. In 2001, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan renamed itself Shangri-La County. American explorers Ted Vaill and Peter Klika visited the Muli area of southern Sichuan Province in 1999, claimed that the Muli monastery in this remote region was the model for James Hilton's Shangri-La, which they thought Hilton learned about from articles on this area in several National Geographic magazine articles in the late 1920s and early 1930s written by Austrian-American explorer Joseph Rock. Vaill completed a film based on their resear
Conga
The conga known as tumbadora, is a tall, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto, tres dos or tres golpes, tumba or salidor. Congas were used in Afro-Cuban music genres such as conga and rumba, where each drummer would play a single drum. Following numerous innovations in conga drumming and construction during the mid-20th century, as well as its internationalization, it became common for drummers to play two or three drums. Congas have become a popular instrument in many forms of Latin music such as son, Afro-Cuban jazz, songo and Latin rock. Most modern congas have a staved wooden or fiberglass shell, a screw-tensioned drumhead, they are played in sets of two to four with the fingers and palms of the hand. Typical congas stand 75 centimetres from the bottom of the shell to the head; the drums may be played. Alternatively, the drums may be mounted on a rack or stand to permit the player to play while standing. While they originated in Cuba, their incorporation into the popular and folk music of other countries has resulted in diversification of terminology for the instruments and the players.
In Cuba, congas are called tumbadoras. Conga players are called congueros, while rumberos refers to those who dance following the path of the players; the term "conga" was popularized in the 1930s. Cuban son and New York jazz fused together to create what was termed mambo, but became known as salsa. In that same period, the popularity of the Conga Line helped to spread this new term. Desi Arnaz played a role in the popularization of conga drums. However, the drum he played was similar to the type of drum known as bokú used in his hometown, Santiago de Cuba; the word conga came from the rhythm la conga used during carnaval in Cuba. The drums used in carnaval could have been referred to as tambores de conga since they played the rhythm la conga, thus translated into English as conga drums. There are five basic strokes: Open tone is played with the four fingers near the rim of the head, producing a clear resonant tone with a distinct pitch. Muffled or mute tone: like the open tone, is made by striking the drum with the four fingers, but holding the fingers against the head to muffle the tone.
Bass tone: played with the full palm on the head. It produces a low muted sound. Slap tone: the most difficult technique producing a loud clear "popping" sound. Touch tone: as implied by the name, this tone is produced by just touching the fingers or heel of the palm to the drum head, it is possible to alternate a touch of the palm with a touch of the fingers in a maneuver called heel-toe, which can be used to produce the conga equivalent of drumrolls. The moose call or glissando is done by rubbing the third finger, supported by the thumb, across the head of the drum; the finger is sometimes moistened with saliva or sweat, sometimes a little coat of beeswax is put on the surface of the conga head to help make the sound. The moose call is done on the bongos. To bend the pitch of the congas, a conguero sometimes uses his elbow to shift around on and apply pressure to different parts of the head; this is not a traditional stroke. Guaguancó uses three congas; the smallest conga is the lead drum known as quinto.
The following nine-measure quinto excerpt is from the guaguancó “La polémica” by Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. This passage moves between the main modes of playing; the A section is the basic ride, as it is known in North America. It spans one clave. An alternate phrase is one measure in length. Cross-beats, the basis of the third section, contradict the meter. By alternating between the lock and the cross, the quinto creates larger rhythmic phrases that expand and contract over several clave cycles; the great Los Muñequintos quintero Jesús Alfonso described this phenomenon as a man getting “drunk at a party, going outside for a while, coming back inside.” The basic son montuno conga pattern is called tumbao. The conga was first used in bands during the late 1930s, became a staple of mambo bands of the 1940s; the primary strokes are sounded on the last offbeats of a two-beat cycle. The fundamental accent—2& is referred to by some musicians as ponche; the basic tumbao sounds open tones on the "and" offbeats.
There are many variations on the basic tumbao. For example, a common variant sounds a single open tone with the third stroke of clave, two tones preceding the three-side of clave; the specific alignment between clave and this tumbao is critical. Another common variant sounds bombo on the tumba. For example: The conga marcha can be heard on countless recordings, including these: Conga by Miami Sound Machine Oye Como Va by Tito Puente Pedro Navaja by Willie Colón and Rubén Blades Se Le Ve by Andy Montañez and Daddy Yankee Watermelon Man by Mongo Santamaría Los Dos Jueyes by Domingo Quiñones and Zion Amor Verdadero and A María Le Gusta by Afro-Cuban All Stars Quizás, Quizás, Quizás by Omara Portuondo and Teresa García Cartula Armonías del Romañe by Tomatito Soy Guanaco Salvadoreño by Bobby Rivas Hoy tenemos by Sidestepper Ahora Vengo Yo by Anthonious Meer, Richi
Polynesian culture
Polynesian culture is the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia who share common traits in language and society. Sequentially, the development of Polynesian culture can be divided into four different historical eras: Exploration and settlement Development in isolation European encounter and colonization until World War II Modern times/After World War II Maternal mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests that Polynesians, including Samoans, Niueans, Cook Islanders, Hawaiians, Marquesans and Māori, are genetically linked to indigenous peoples of parts of Maritime Southeast Asia including those of Taiwanese aborigines; this DNA evidence is supported by archaeological evidence. Recent studies into paternal Y chromosome analysis shows that Polynesians are genetically linked to peoples of Melanesia. Between about 2000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread through Maritime South-East Asia – certainly starting out from Taiwan – into the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia.
In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with a degree of certainty. In the mid-2nd millennium BC a distinctive culture appeared in north-west Melanesia, in the Bismarck Archipelago, the chain of islands forming a great arc from New Britain to the Admiralty Islands; this culture, known as Lapita, stands out in the Melanesian archeological record, with its large permanent villages on beach terraces along the coasts. Characteristic of the Lapita culture is the making of pottery, including a great many vessels of varied shapes, some distinguished by fine patterns and motifs pressed into the clay. Within a mere three or four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita culture spread 6000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as Samoa and Tonga. In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed; the Proto-Polynesians who find their origins in Maritime Southeast Asia were an adventurous seafaring people with developed navigation skills.
They perfected their seafaring and boat-craft techniques as each successive generations "island-hopped", starting from the island of Taiwan through the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagos and west to the Marianas dispersing throughout the Pacific Ocean. They colonised unsettled islands by making long canoe voyages, in some cases against the prevailing winds and tides. Polynesian navigators steered by the sun and the stars, by careful observations of cloud reflections and bird flight patterns, were able to determine the existence and location of islands; the name given to a star or constellation taken as a mark to steer by was kaweinga. The discovery of new islands and island groups was by means of entire small villages called vanua or "banwa" setting sail on great single and double-hulled canoes. Archaeological evidence indicates that by about 1280 AD, these voyagers had settled the vast Polynesian triangle with its northern corner at Hawaii, the eastern corner at Rapa Nui, lastly the southern corner in New Zealand.
By comparison, Viking navigators first settled Iceland around 875 AD. There have been suggestions. Carbon-dating of chicken bones found by Chilean archaeologists on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile was thought to date from between 1321 and 1407 AD; this initial report suggested a Polynesian pre-Columbian origin. However, a report looking at the same specimens concluded: A published pre-Columbian, Chilean specimen and six pre-European Polynesian specimens cluster with the same European/Indian subcontinental/Southeast Asian sequences, providing no support for a Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America. In contrast, sequences from two archaeological sites on Easter Island group with an uncommon haplogroup from Indonesia and China and may represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal. Modeling of the potential marine carbon contribution to the Chilean archaeological specimen casts further doubt on claims for pre-Columbian chickens, definitive proof will require further analyses of ancient DNA sequences and radiocarbon and stable isotope data from archaeological excavations within both Chile and Polynesia.
The cultivation before western exploration by many Polynesian cultures of the sweet potato, a South American plant, is evidence for contact. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia around 700 AD by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, spread across Polynesia to Hawaii and New Zealand from there. While the early Polynesians were skilled navigators, most evidence indicates that their primary exploratory motivation was to ease the demands of burgeoning populations. Polynesian mythology does not speak of explorers bent on conquest of new territories, but rather of heroic discoverers of new lands for the benefit of those who voyaged with them. While further influxes of immigrants from other Polynesian islands sometimes augmented the growth and development of the local population, for the most part, each island or island group's culture developed in isolation. There was no widespread inter-island group communication, nor is there much indication during this period of any interest in such communications, at least not for economic reasons.
However all these isolated colonies originating from Maritime Southeast Asia still retained the strong influence of their ancestral culture. These are obvious in social hierarchies and technology which p
