passport to culture Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión arts education SchoolTime Teacher s Guide NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

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1 passport SchoolTime to culture Teacher s Guide Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión Generous support for SchoolTime provided, in part, by arts education NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

2 arts education NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER contents On Stage 3 Musical melting pot Meet the Artist 4 A different drummer Did You Know? 5 Exploring Latin jazz In the Classroom 6 Related activities and resources Kid Power! Through energy efficiency and conservation, kids can help preserve our planet s rich natural resources and promote a healthy environment. TIP OF THE DAY Power down to save up It is entertaining to listen to music (like the sounds of Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión) on your computer or electronic devices. To minimize the amount of electricity they require to function, turn them off when you leave a room. Made possible through the generosity of the PSEG Foundation. NJPAC s Summer Youth Performance Workshop The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) Arts Education Department presents the 16 th season of the Passport to Culture SchoolTime Performance Series. Teacher s Resource Guide This guide will help you prepare your class for an enriching experience at our SchoolTime Passport to Culture Performance. We provide discussion ideas, activities and reading resources that promote arts literacy in your classroom and link to New Jersey s Core Curriculum Content Standards. You can find additional resources online at artsed.njpac.org. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this guide to any class attending a SchoolTime performance (all other rights reserved). NJPAC Arts Education At NJPAC, our mission is to join with parents, teachers and community to cultivate an appreciation of the arts for all children in all schools. We believe the arts provide an effective means of knowing and learning that helps children find the self-esteem, poise and confidence they need to succeed in every facet of life. Our innovative programs are designed to engage the artist in every child. In-School Residencies NJPAC brings the joy of dance, music and theater directly into your classroom with In-School Residencies. Our teaching artists create stimulating performing arts experiences that engage students imaginations and encourage self-expression. Residencies are customized to meet the curricular goals of the classroom teacher. Each residency ends with a performance that teaches students to work together and believe in themselves. SchoolTime and Family Performances Open a world of culture to your students through performances of music, dance, storytelling, theater, and puppetry through professional stage productions by local, national and international artists. Performances are enriched by teacher resource guides as well as Q&A sessions with the artists. Arts Training Programs Students interested in acting, dance, musical theater, vocal or instrumental music will find an artistic home at NJPAC where creative expression and solid technique serve as cornerstones of the Arts Training programs. Teaching Artists with exceptional professional experience guide students at all levels of arts learning (beginner, intermediate and advanced) to greater creative understanding and self-confidence. visit artsed.njpac.org Find additional resources by clicking on SchoolTime Performances 2 Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión njpac.org

3 on stage Roots & rhythms By Marty Lipp Even if you have listened to Afro-Cuban jazz, there is a good chance you never experienced it the way you will with Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión and you certainly will never hear it the same way again. Sanabria is a drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, activist and educator. He has spent his adult life playing and demonstrating the mechanics and traditions that make Latin jazz, in its many manifestations, what it is the product of several very different cultures, yet a uniquely American music. The concert at NJPAC will begin with a virtuosic piece, Sanabria says, played by his multi-generational, multicultural band Ascensión, meaning there will be hot instrumental solos, stop time breaks, tempo and meter changes accompanied by a hardswinging rhythm section. Sanabria will break down the music into the living history it is, explaining its basic building blocks: the rhythms, which have their roots in West Africa; the melodies and harmonies, which trace back to Europe; even elements from the indigenous Caribbean people in instruments like the maracas. He will outline the history of how these influences were united and how black slaves brought their music and culture to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Central and South America and fused it with Euro-based culture. This created new musical forms like rumba and són from Cuba, bomba and plena from Puerto Rico, merengue from the Dominican Republic, joropo from Venezuela, and samba and bossa nova from Brazil, as well as Latin jazz in New York City. Rhythm is fundamental to all forms of Latin music, in particular the clave (Spanish for key ) beat that binds Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican music. The musicians of Ascensión will start with the clave, then add layer upon layer of rhythm, showing that no matter how complex the music may sound, it stays grounded in the distinctive building block that is also at the heart of rock, funk, R&B, and hip-hop. The band will perform selections representing the genres that grew from this European-African, Amerindian mix and demonstrate how improvisation from the African-American tradition of the blues and jazz mingled with various Latin rhythms to create Afro-Cuban jazz, the first form of Latin jazz in New York City. Sanabria will also illustrate how improvisation is central to the music and the effects of restrictions imposed on music-making by upholders of slavery (for example, how Africans adapted to bans on drumming in some slave cultures). After presenting the elements that make up the music, the band will show how the music s popularity is tied to social dances, such as merengue. Students will actively participate with the band when they are called upon to help demonstrate the steps on stage. Marty Lipp has been writing and teaching about music from around the world for more than 20 years. He has written for The Star-Ledger, The New York Times, Newsday, Playbill and The Huffington Post. (Bobby Sanabria) is recognized as one of the most articulate musician-scholars of la tradición living today. Jazzheads.com njpac.org Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión 3

4 MEET THE ARTIST Beat poet Bobby Sanabria grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country what became known as Fort Apache in the Bronx but to him it was rich rich with the sounds of salsa, jazz, soul, funk, R&B, rock, and hip-hop. The award-winning jazz drummer and percussionist recalls his early years as a time of hearing incredible, creative music on the radio, on public television practically everywhere. You are what you eat and that s the food I ate when I was a kid, he says. A turning point in his life was going to a free outdoor concert near his home and seeing the famous bandleader Tito Puente in performance. The drums spoke to me and that became my instrument of choice, he remembers. But in reality, the old saying held true: The instrument chose me. His emerging talent got him into the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. Strangely enough, the Latin music that had surrounded him like air back in the Bronx was completely foreign to almost everyone at Berklee. Sanabria brought along many of his favorite albums and eventually introduced a couple of classmates to the sophisticated playing inherent to Latin jazz. As he presented the music to other students and even some teachers they began asking him questions about its origins and techniques, some of which he couldn t answer. Even though he was immersed in the music from an early age, he wanted to educate himself about its history and learn to communicate its unwritten traditions and influence on other types of music. I started to connect the dots and I m still doing that, he recalls. After graduating from Berklee, Sanabria performed with a variety of legendary bandleaders from the worlds of jazz and Latin music, like Mongo Santamaría, Tito The drums spoke to me, says Bobby Sanabria of a performance by Tito Puente that made a lasting impression. Puente, Paquito D Rivera, Dizzy Gillespie and Mario Bauzá, considered the father of Afro-Cuban jazz. His nonet Ascensión (the band he formed as a teenager) brought him to the public s attention as a bandleader. With Ascensión, Sanabria has recorded his own compositions and arrangements. He received seven Grammy and Latin Grammy award nominations for his work with not only Ascensión, but with his Quarteto Aché and his 19-piece big band, Multiverse. Sanabria maintains that while the Hispanic population continues to grow in the U.S., the culture is being lost. Many young people, he also believes, have missed out on the experience of hearing live jazz or learning to play it. That s why I like doing these educational concerts, he concludes. It s my way of giving back and trying to remedy that situation, in particular where Latin music is concerned. The influence of Latin music and jazz on U.S. culture is incredible and everyone who calls themselves an American should know about it. M.L. Read more about Bobby Sanabria at bobbysanabria.com 4 Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión njpac.org

5 DID YOU KNOW? A survey of Latin jazz By Cristian Amigo Latin jazz is a mixture of both Latin music and jazz in varying proportions. Since the 1940s, the Latin part of Latin jazz specifically refers to Afro-Cuban rhythms that are mixed with the harmony, instruments and swing of American jazz to create a hybrid style. This style is a natural mix due to the fluid boundaries between the Caribbean and New Orleans in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. The early New Orleans jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton went so far as to say that all jazz had a Latin tinge. In Cuba at this time, musicians and arrangers were also discovering the jazz and ragtime music of New Orleans. An important moment in the development of Latin jazz came in the 1940s in New York City, when the Cuban musician Mario Bauzá and American trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie played together in the bands of Cab Calloway and Chick Webb. They performed in clubs such as La Conga, the Palladium, the Roseland Ballroom, and the Apollo Theater in Harlem, venues that featured both Caribbean and jazz music and bands. Bauzá introduced Gillespie to the congero Chano Pozo, who was to become a pivotal figure in Gillespie s cubop or Latin jazz music. Also in the 1940s, Gillespie, saxophonist Charlie Bird Parker, pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, and others were inventing what would become known as bebop, by introducing a new and more complex sense of melody and harmony into jazz. Gillespie, in turn, brought these elements to his Latin jazz experiments with Chano, who contributed the rhythmic concepts such as the Cuban clave. Their collaboration marked the first genuine synthesis of Afro-Cuban rhythms and American jazz. Together, Gillespie and Chano wrote some of cubop or early Latin jazz s biggest hits including Manteca, a song that is considered a standard. Other musicians, bands and arrangers were also developing the Latin jazz sound in New York during the 1940s and 1950s. Pianist Eddie Palmieri is among the standard bearers for Latin jazz in the United States. They included the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans (directed by Bauzá), the arranger and bandleader Arturo Chico O Farrill and the Puerto Rican percussionist, arranger and bandleader Tito Puente. The mambo, popularized internationally by the Cuban bandleader Pérez Prado in the late 1950s, increased the reach of Latin jazz into American popular music. Desi Arnaz, featured on the TV show I Love Lucy, as well as many other bands and musicians (such as Puerto Rican trombonist and composer Juan Tizol, who wrote such classics as Caravan and Perdido) provided light versions of Latin music for a large, national audience. After the Communist dictator Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, relations between Cuba and the United States deteriorated. The free exchange of musicians came to a virtual standstill; New York and Cuban musicians began developing their own styles in relative isolation from each other. During the next decade, New York musicians such as pianists Eddie Palmieri and Chick Corea, percussionist Mongo Santamaría and Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band became the standard bearers for Latin jazz in the United States. The Latin jazz sound also expanded to include other Latin-American and American New Jersey jazzman Paquito D Rivera, who performs on sax and clarinet, is a contemporary contributor to Cuba s musical history. music and rhythms. The Brazilian bossa nova craze led by Brazilian guitarist and composer João Gilberto and anchored by American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz swept the United States. Based in New York, Cuban percussionist Santamaría became influential with his mixed style known as Latin soul. This form combined the jazz soul sounds made popular by saxophonist Nat Cannonball Adderley with Afro-Cuban percussion and the flute style of Cuban charanga groups. Bugalú, which mixed Afro-Cuban elements, jazz and American R&B, also became popular. Influential musicians such as Willie Colón and Ray Barretto worked in the bugalú and Latin soul styles before moving on to salsa and Latin jazz, respectively, in the 1970s. By the mid-1970s, the group Irakere was revolutionizing Cuban music in Cuba with its own experiments, which mixed jazz, classical music and Cuban folkloric elements. Irakere became known around the world for its sound and its direct relationship to Cuba and Cuban musical history. Eventually, Irakere s co-conductor and musician Paquito D Rivera and the group s trumpeter, Arturo Sandoval, both came to the United States to contribute to the ongoing development of Latin jazz in this country. njpac.org Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión 5

6 In the classroom Before the Performance 1. Ask students to go online and find the instruments, including percussion, used in both Afro-Cuban and jazz music. Make a list of the instruments with pictures. Play at least two examples of music that use the instruments. Introduce and explain the context of the music to the class, focusing on who? what? when? where? why? how? (1.1, 1.3, 1.4) * 2. Ask students to write on this topic: If archaeologists found your music collection in 100,000 years, what would they be able to learn about you? What would the format (MP3), language, rhythms, and words say about who you are? Have students program music to their life stories by organizing their text and musical selections with Thinkfinity s Interactive Online Soundtrack, found under In the Classroom/Student Interactives on Verizon s Thinkfinity.org. (1.1, 1.4) After the Performance 1. Have students indentify the instruments used in the performance by Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión. Do they think the music was or was not an even balance between jazz and Latin music? Ask them to explain and support their answers with examples drawn from the performance. Did they recognize any other styles in the performed music, such as classical, ragtime, Venezuelan, tango, samba, or Afro-Cuban? (1.1, 1.3, 1.4) 2. Have students attend a local Latin jazz performance and write a report on the experience. Their reports should include answers to who? what? where? why? how? Is listening to live music different from listening to recordings at home? Why? Following the performance, have the students interview one of the musicians. (Musicians are usually willing to cooperate on a school project.) Students should prepare two or three original questions prior to the interview. Students should also ask: How did you become a musician? How did you become interested in jazz and Latin music? Which artists have influenced your musical development? (1.1, 1.3, 1.4) 3. Using the book Jazz ABZ by Wynton Marsalis and illustrated by Paul Rogers (Candlewick Press, 2005) as a guide, have students choose a Latin jazz musician for a mini-biography. Ask them to create an alliterative poem about that musician s music, life or work, as employed in the book. (For example, Bobby and his band brought out the bongos to build the beat. ) * Numbers indicate the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standard(s) supported by the activity. More Resources Websites bobbysanabria.com Official website of Bobby Sanabria Thinkfinity.org Verizon Foundation website for classroom educational resource material. CDs Some recordings by Bobby Sanabria: Multiverse. Jazzheads, Kenya Revisited Live!!! Jazzheads, Big Band Urban Folktales. Jazzheads, Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché. Khaeon, Bobby Sanabria... live & in clave!!! Arabesque Recordings, Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión N.Y.C. Aché! Flying Fish, Books for Teachers and Students Dunscomb, J. Richard, and Dr. Willie L. Hill, Jr. Jazz Pedagogy: The Jazz Educator s Handbook and Resource Guide. Warner Bros. Publications, Morales, Ed. The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots of Latin Music, from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond. Da Capo Press, Yanow, Scott. Afro-Cuban Jazz: Third Ear The Essential Listening Companion. Backbeat Books, Videos Search Bobby Sanabria on youtube.com for LP Basics (Sanabria teaches various rhythms, such as mambo and danzón) and The Bronx Journal (an eight-part interview with the artist). 6 Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión njpac.org

7 Teaching Science Through Theater (Grades 6 12) By Sharon J. Sherman, Ed.D. Integrating science across the curriculum is a practical way to help students see meaningful connections between science and the other subjects they study in grades It breaks the barriers between subjects, unifies disciplines and connects lessons to real-life experiences. Have students find the science in music. Explain that sound starts when an object receives energy and begins to vibrate. Have students tap on their desks with their hands, making a drum-like sound. When they tap on their desks they supply energy, which causes the surrounding air molecules to vibrate. The vibrations travel through the air as waves and are picked up by their ears, which enable them to hear the sounds. Musical instruments work by making air vibrate. Changes in frequency and amplitude Bobby Sanabria s vocabulary list of vibrations create tunes and rhythms. The quality of the sound of an instrument depends upon how the air vibrates. Have students think about how different musical instruments create sound. Begin with the strings, which include the violin, viola, cello, and bass. These instruments are played when a string that is stretched across the body of the instrument is plucked or bowed. The length, diameter and tightness of the string change the sound. Let students experiment with a string instrument and find out what happens when the player presses on a string and makes it shorter. How does the sound change? Have them research the work of Pythagoras, who studied the relationship between the pitch of sound and the length of a string. Wind instruments such as the oboe, visit artsed.njpac.org Find additional resources by clicking on SchoolTime Performances abanico the characteristic rim shot/roll/ rim shot played by the timbales to signal the mambo/montuno section. bolero a Cuban ballad of Spanish troubadour origins. charanga a Cuban orchestral-style band featuring baroque wooden flute and strings with timbales, conga and güiro. clave a two-bar rhythmical phrase that is the fundamental building block of Afro- Cuban music, made up of five notes split up or There are two types of clave representing two distinct yet related forms of Cuban music: the són and the rumba. congero a person who plays the conga, a tall, barrel-shaped drum of African derivation that is played with the hands. conjunto a small Cuban dance ensemble that features two trumpets, tres, bongo, conga, bass, piano, sonero (lead singer) and segunda voz (background singer). cubop an early Latin jazz style, developed by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in the mid-1940s, that combines Latin rhythms with bebop. danzón literally grand dance, danzón was developed by composer Miguel Failde in 1877 in Matanzas, Cuba and combines elements of the French contradanse, British court dance and rondo with clave-driven rhythm. guaracha a fast, humorous doubleentendre form of són. mambo a popular style of Afro-Cuban music, mambo originated with Arsenio Rodríguez in small bands (conjunto) in the late 1930s. The mambo reached the high point of its popularity in the late 1950s at the Palladium in New York, where the Machito Orchestra, directed by Mario Bauzá, advanced the mambo concept by fusing it with jazz. montuno a repetitive vamp used saxophone, bassoon, and clarinet are played by blowing on a reed, causing the reed to vibrate. Air is trapped inside the body of the flute or piccolo and vibrates when the musician blows across the hole in the mouthpiece. How does covering or uncovering the keys on a wind instrument change the note being played? Brass instruments such as the trumpet, trombone and tuba have a mouthpiece shaped like a cup. The musician vibrates his or her lips to make the air inside resonate. Have students experiment with brass instruments and determine how to make different notes. Percussion instruments such as the drum, triangle, xylophone, and tympani create sounds when struck. Drums make sounds when their stretched surfaces are hit, causing air to vibrate. How does changing the size of the drum affect the sound produced? What types of sounds are made by the different sized tubes of the xylophone? Teaching Science Through the Arts is made possible through the generous support of Roche. by singers and instrumentalists for improvisation in Cuban music. percussion the beating or striking of a musical instrument; the musical instruments that produce tones when struck by the hand or an object. rumba the fusion of Spanish flamenco vocalese and dance with drumming and dance rooted in West Africa. salsa literally sauce, a music industry buzzword for són-styled music heard in New York in the early 1970s. són a folk song form that developed in Cuba s Oriente region in the late 16 th century; it unites the rhythmic/melodic forms of Spanish troubadour, West and North Africa and the Middle East. songo the contemporary form of són, a fusion of the melodic elements of són with rhythmic elements of the rumba tradition, rock, funk, and R&B. njpac.org Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión 7

8 Acknowledgments as of 1/1/13 arts education NJPAC Arts Education programs are made possible by the generosity of: Automatic Data Processing, Bank of America, The Arts Education Endowment Fund in Honor of Raymond G. Chambers, Leon & Toby Cooperman, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey, McCrane Foundation, Merck Company Foundation, Albert & Katharine Merck, The Prudential Foundation, PSEG Foundation, Marian & David Rocker, The Sagner Family Foundation, The Star-Ledger/Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Verizon, Victoria Foundation, Wells Fargo, John & Suzanne Willian / Goldman Sachs Gives and The Women s Association of NJPAC. Additional support is provided by: Advance Realty, Anonymous, C.R. Bard Foundation, BD, The Frank and Lydia Bergen Foundation, Berkeley College, Allen & Joan Bildner, Bloomberg, Ann and Stan Borowiec, Jennifer Chalsty, The Johnny Mercer Foundation, Chase, Edison Properties, Veronica Goldberg Foundation, Meg & Howard Jacobs, Johnson & Johnson, The MCJ Amelior Foundation, The New Jersey Cultural Trust, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Novo Nordisk, Panasonic Corporation of North America, Pechter Foundation, PNC Foundation on behalf of the PNC Grow Up Great program, The Provident Bank Foundation, E. Franklin Robbins Charitable Trust, Roche, TD Charitable Foundation, Turrell Fund, and The Blanche M. & George L. Watts Mountainside Community Foundation. NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER One Center Street Newark, New Jersey Administration: Arts Education Hotline: schooltime@njpac.org Writer: Marty Lipp Editor: Linda Fowler Designer: Bonnie Felt NJPAC Teacher s Guide Review Committee: Laura Ingoglia, Judith Israel, Mary Lou Johnston, Dr. Christy Oliver-Hawley, Amy Tenzer Photos of Bobby Sanabria on the cover and pages 4 and 6 by Tom Schwarz Photo on page 3 by Jeff Sacks/TAMA Drums Photo of Paquito D Rivera on page 5 by Alberto Romeu Copyright 2013 New Jersey Performing Arts Center All Rights Reserved New Jersey Performing Arts Center William J. Marino... Chairman John Schreiber... President & CEO Sanaz Hojreh... Assistant Vice President of Arts Education Verushka Spirito... Associate Director of Performances Caitlin Evans Jones... Director of In-School Programs Faye Competello... Director of Arts Training Linda Fowler... Editor of Teacher s Resource Guides visit artsed.njpac.org Find additional resources by clicking on SchoolTime Performances or scan the QR code displayed here. For even more arts integration resources, please go to Thinkfinity.org, the Verizon Foundation s signature digital learning platform, designed to improve educational and literacy achievement. Bring the arts into your classroom NJPAC brings the joy of dance, music and theater directly into your classroom with In-School Residencies. Our teaching artists create experiences that engage students imaginations and encourage self-expression. Residencies are customized to meet the curricular goals of the classroom teacher. Each residency ends with a performance that teaches students to work together and believe in themselves. Call (973) for more information on these exciting programs. 8 Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión njpac.org