passport
SchoolTime
to culture
Teacher’s Guide 2012–2013
Bobby Sanabria
& Ascensión
Generous support
for SchoolTime
provided, in part, by
arts education
NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
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
NJPAC’s Summer Youth Performance Workshop
The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) Arts Education Department presents
the 16th 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
2012–2013 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
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 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
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
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
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 19th
and early 20th 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.
New Jersey jazzman Paquito D’Rivera, who performs
on sax and clarinet, is a contemporary contributor
to Cuba’s musical history.
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
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
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.”)
CDs
Some recordings by Bobby Sanabria:
Multiverse. Jazzheads, 2012.
Kenya Revisited Live!!! Jazzheads, 2009.
Big Band Urban Folktales. Jazzheads, 2007.
Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché. Khaeon,
2002.
Bobby Sanabria ... live & in clave!!!
Arabesque Recordings, 2000.
Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión N.Y.C. Aché!
Flying Fish, 1993.
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, 2002.
* Numbers indicate the NJ Core Curriculum
Content Standard(s) supported by the activity.
Morales, Ed. The Latin Beat: The Rhythms
and Roots of Latin Music, from Bossa
Nova to Salsa and Beyond. Da Capo Press,
2003.
More Resources
Yanow, Scott. Afro-Cuban Jazz: Third
Ear—The Essential Listening Companion.
Backbeat Books, 2000.
Websites
bobbysanabria.com
Official website of Bobby Sanabria
Thinkfinity.org
Verizon Foundation website for classroom
educational resource material.
6   Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión • njpac.org
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).
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 6-12. 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
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
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.
Find additional resources by clicking on SchoolTime Performances
Bobby Sanabria’s vocabulary list
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.
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
charanga — a Cuban orchestral-style band in 1877 in Matanzas, Cuba and combines
featuring baroque wooden flute and strings
with timbales, conga and güiro.
clave — a two-bar rhythmical phrase that
is the fundamental building block of AfroCuban music, made up of five notes split up
3 + 2 or 2 + 3. 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).
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
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 16th
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
Acknowledgments as of 1/1/13
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.
arts education
NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
One Center Street
Newark, New Jersey 07102
Administration: 973 642-8989
Arts Education Hotline: 973 353-8009
[email protected]
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.
8 Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión • njpac.org
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) 353-8009 for more
information on these exciting
programs.