Here's a timba trivia quiz from my upcoming book for non-musicians. The idea is to demonstrate a key difference between salsa and timba - the "song-specific" accompaniment. So, this track starts by playing a typical vamp four times through with the generic conga, piano and bass parts - then it segues into a timba version with a unique part for each of those three instruments. The idea is that you should be able to know what song it is just from listening to these three accompaniment parts.

So listen to the track by clicking here and then see if you can identify the song in the COMMENTS section.

Here are some preview pages on the new book .

And for Bay Areans, tickets for HdP are on sale now !   [Kevin Moore]

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Eddie Palmieri and José Claussell on timbales - photo by Tom Ehrlich

Tom has a new gallery from the first night of the Monterey Jazz Fest featuring Eddie P., Grégoire Maret, Jack DeJohnette and others.

Rebeca Mauleón's Lecture Series got off to an amazing start with Danilo Lozano, Orestes Vilató, Jesús Díaz and Abe Gamroyan. Incredibly interesting stuff. It continues every Wed. in October.

Martin Cohen is really on a roll, releasing super-high quality videos of New York's growing community of world class Cuban musicians. Iván Llanes, who came with Maraca on drums, turns out to be a great singer as well.

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Wednesday, Oct. 3, 7:00 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

Rebeca Mauleón has a genius for - among other things - translating Cuban music concepts into simple, entertaining English, so the Bay Area is fired up about her new lecture series on Cuban Music. The first lecture, on mambo, features guest artists Orestes Vilató, Jesús Díaz and others. Later courses will feature Jimmy Branly, El Negro Hernández and a whole cast of other big names. Hopefully the whole 5-lecture series will be filmed and released as a DVD. There will be a new lecture with different guests every Wednesday in October. See you there! [Kevin Moore]

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Peter Maiden files this photo-report on the recent Center for Latin Studies conference with Bill Martínez, Raúl Fernández and others.

BOOK NEWS: Peter has also written an excellent book, Media Workers for Social Change, available in softcover, Kindle, iPad and Nook.

MORE BOOK NEWS: Robert Fernández is working on an instructional book on playing three batás with one player, and, along with Luca Brandoli, on the first transcription of the arará version of the Oru seco.

MORE BOOKS NEWS: My tome for dancers and non-musicians keeps growing. Should be done in less than  a month. (And yes, that's what I said last month and the month before that.)

Now, on to the latest galleries, both on the Pedrito Martínez Group. Peter Maiden photographed them at Yoshi's, and Tom Ehrlich at the Monterey Jazz . Tom's earlier Yoshi's gallery is here. [Kevin Moore]

Pedrito Martínez Group at Monterey Jazz Fest  - photo by Tom Ehrlich (click for gallery)

Pedrito Martínez Group at Yoshi's Oakland - photo by Peter Maiden (click for gallery)

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