How To Play Sax In a Salsa Band

Reposted from my home page.

[Warning: the following will have stereotypes in it. It is also based on a real life experience]

I: Finding a band

Or rather find a band leader. The best way is to start having your car worked on in immigrant neighborhoods. Make sure that you get your tires there, and your oil changed there. Leave your saxophone on the car seat, or wear your gig bag on your shoulder as you pay the clerk.

Eventually, you will have the following conversation:

"You play?"

[You think to yourself: No, I carry around this tenor for fun and exercise]

"Yeah, some"

"What instrument? Saxo?"

"Yes, I play saxophone."

"You play that big one?"

"You mean the baritone? Yes, I play baritone sax."

"Hey, man, I am starting up this salsa band, and I need somebody to play baritone. You want to play?"

"That might be fun. You're just starting out? You don't have any gigs?"

"No, man, just starting. We are getting together on Sunday. It would be bueno if you could make it to the rehearsal so we could hear you play."

"OK"

Little do you know what adventure awaits.

First of all, "I need somebody to play baritone" means "I need somebody to play baritone on one out 20 songs in our book, and the rest of the time I need other stuff." Be sure to pack a soprano sax, an alto, a tenor and a baritone. It is also essential that you pack a flute and a piccolo.

However, keep in mind that real salsa bands have flute players who have those wacky G treble flutes which are halfway between flute and piccolo. You will be blowing your chops out on all of those high C's and D's on a traditional C flute.

That rehearsal Sunday he mentioned? Well, it will be cancelled. He will call you at your house about the time the rehearsal starts. Since he never gave you directions, and you were told that he was not really reachable by phone, you were still at home, so it is no big deal. No, the rehearsal will be Wednesday night. By the way, could you bring a microphone?

The rehearsal on Wednesday is supposed to be at 8. About 6:30, he calls and tells you that rehearsal is in this furniture refinishing store in the Bay View/Hunter's Point district. Lovely.

Tip: Take all of your horns. Take a music stand. Take a mike. Take a mike stand. Take your stands for your horns. Take a pair of claves. Take a folding chair. Take sweaters, the shop will be cold.

Tip: The 8:00 start time is about 15 minutes before the band leader will leave from San Jose. He will get there at 9. His cousin, who owns the shop, will get there at 8:30. You will have to smile at him, as he speaks no English and you speak no Spanish.

Once everybody arrrives at 9:00 or so, then the real fun starts.

The band leader does not actually know that there are different size saxophones in different transpositions, except the baritone is bigger. He will give you random parts for saxophone, trumpet, trombone, flute, vibes, guitar... Some advice:

• Play trumpet parts on soprano sax.


• It does not matter which octave you play piano/vibes/guitar parts in; play it on flute.


• Play trombone parts on tenor sax. Learn the transposition. It is a good one to know. The trombone parts will be high and low, so playing it on bari or alto so that the transposition will be easy will cause you to go crazy with octaves.

The music itself will be basically unreadable. It will have been transcribed off of 70s records by the band leader's brother in Peru, and faxed to the band leader. It will not tell you which saxophone you are supposed to play; you will have to figure it out as the chart starts. You might not have a saxophone part, see above! If there is no chart at all, just watch the mayhem.

The first thing to do is to learn the basic form of a salsa chart:

• Introduction
  
• Verse (which may be repeated)
  
• Call and Reponse
  
• Mambo I
  
• Call and Response II
  
• Mambo II
  
• Call and Response III
  
• Coda
  

Of course, their are Spanish names for all of these, which you won't know or remember. So, the important thing is that the Call and Reponse sections are ad lib; they will go on a long time. You won't be playing during these, so you should play claves during that time. Be sure and get the basic clave right. Watch the timbales player to see whether he is doing a 2-3 or a 3-2 clave. (1)

Also, the bass player never plays on one. The piano player's mantoono will keep you on track, so pay attention to it.

At some point, the leader will indicate it is time to go on. At that point, you start at Mambo I. One of the best uses of the time during the Call and Response is to find where the mambos are.

This whole process repeats and you play Mambo II, and then again, except you play the song out.

Now, there will be fifteen or twenty minutes between songs. The percussion players will keep playing anyway; they never stop. They don't ever stop playing. They don't read music. They don't speak English. And the bongos, congos and timbales will just keep playing and playing and playing...

There will be kids running around the rehearsal, too. All of the musicians will bring their entire families.

The furniture warehouse will have fumes, and really won't have enough room, and will have no heat. The neighborhood won't be great.

However, once you get playing, it will be fun. Once you figure it out.

After the rehearsal, he will give you ten tapes with the recordings from the LPs. Of course, they are in different keys, and the number of repeats and mambos and stuff will be different. He does this for the percussion players. The tapes are basically useless for you since he keeps your music and there are no artists or titles listed for you to go out and buy more music of.

II. At the gig

Take earplugs. The sound man will be another cousin who drinks too much so your speakers will feedback and the entire band will be too loud.

The gig will start on time. Trust me. Get set up. The bandleader will blow in like a tornado along with the rest of the band, and somehow, they will all be set up in time.

The gig will start at midnight, and will go to four.

And you will get paid $500. The best paying gig you can get. Keep in mind, your band still basically sucks. If only you could make it on the real salsa circuit...

The rest of the horn section (who you will have never seen) will be dancing during the call and response. At this point, you will be the big dumb gringo who can't do a salsa step. Don't worry about that. It's ok, the only other white guy is the bass player, who does not have to dance.

III. After the gig

You will get about 10 gigs, and you will have innumerable five hour rehearsals. After this happens for a while, the band will fall apart. The bandleader is not organized enough to take it to the next level, and since he does not believe in substitutes, he has no backup personel when people move or quit or whatever...

You will get calls about once a year from him from then on, talking about grand schemes for putting together another band. You are polite and tell him that if he can actually get a full band together, you might be willing to try it again.

(c) 1999 Sydney R. Polk. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of Sydney R. Polk or his designated legal agent.