The True Cuban Bass

The bottom line

Yes, I’m a pianist, and yes, this is a bass book — and I’d still call it required reading for anyone who plays Cuban music on any instrument. In this music the bass is the engine: the bajo anticipado, that pull of the harmony one beat ahead of the barline, is what makes a son montuno feel like one, and if the pianist doesn’t understand what the bassist is doing, the montuno never locks. I bought this book to understand my own rhythm section; it turned out to be one of the clearest windows into how Cuban music works that I own.

The credentials here are not marketing copy. Carlos Del Puerto was the founding bassist of Irakere — the band that gave the world Chucho Valdés, Paquito D’Rivera, and Arturo Sandoval — and a bass professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Silvio Vergara held the bass chair in Conjunto Rumbavana. The book is bilingual, English and Spanish in parallel columns, with Rebeca Mauleón (of Salsa Guidebook fame) co-editing and translating. It’s short — about 63 pages of content — but almost every page carries information you cannot get anywhere else in print.

Who it’s for — and who should skip it

Get it if you’re a bassist (upright or electric — the cover says “for acoustic or electric bass” and means it) who wants to play Cuban styles the way Cubans play them, not the way a generic “Latin” chart suggests. Also get it if you’re a pianist, arranger, or drummer working in Latin jazz or salsa: Chapter Two on clave and Chapter One’s genealogy of styles are the best short explanations of this material I’ve found, and they’re instrument-agnostic. You do need to read bass clef fluently — there is no tab and no hand-holding.

Skip it if you’re a beginning bassist looking for a method. There’s no technique instruction whatsoever — no fingerings, no graded exercises — and the difficulty jumps from two-bar patterns to dense professional transcriptions with nothing in between. Skip it too if what you want is modern timba: the book was published in 1994, and its newest style is the songo of Los Van Van. And if you want one comprehensive, play-along-driven course in all Latin bass styles including Brazilian, Oscar Stagnaro’s The Latin Bass Book (same publisher) is the better single purchase — more below.

What’s inside

Three chapters, plus recorded audio of the examples (originally a cassette in my printing — the interior text still says “practice them with the enclosed cassette” — later editions ship with CDs or online audio).

Chapter One, “Origin and Development of the Accompaniment Styles,” is the heart of the book’s teaching idea: the styles come in chronological order of development, so you learn why the patterns relate, not just what they are. It starts with the danzón, which “evolved in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1879” out of the French contradanza and the danza cubana, and notes the moment in 1910 when José Urfé’s danzón “El Bombín de Barreto” imported the montuno of the son — the marriage that fathered nearly everything after. From there each style gets its bajo básico (basic bass line) and a recorded example: danzón, son, bolero, cha-cha-chá, son montuno, guajira, afro, mambo, rumba, guaracha, and more, with short pieces like “Mi Bombolaye” to apply them. My favorite page groups every style into two families — those built on the son’s basic bass line and those built on the second measure of the danzón bassline — a genealogy chart in two staves.

Chapter Two, “The Clave and Its Relation to the Bass,” covers son, rumba, and 6/8 clave, the 3-2 versus 2-3 question, and how melody and harmony decide where the clave “enters.” The authors are refreshingly honest that there is no single system for laying out clave in a piece — “the musician should know — or better yet, feel — where the clave lies correctly” — and then hand you the most liberating sentence in the book: any of the traditional Cuban bass rhythms, without melody or harmony, are always correct with the clave. The chapter follows with guidelines by progression (start a I-IV-V7-IV-I vamp on an anticipated tonic and the clave is always 2-3), eight sets of variations over son, son-cha, and guaracha, a setting of “Lágrimas Negras,” a section on guaguancó, songo, pilón, and mozambique (where “a basic bass line for any of these styles does not exist” — you apply the son concept), guaguancó variations credited to Orlando “Cachaíto” López himself, two dense pages of “Cuban Tumbaos” each labeled with its clave orientation, and a written-out “Son Study (For Cachao, ‘our father’).”

Chapter Three is eight complete bass transcriptions from records, with band and bassist named: Cachaíto on “La Flauta Mágica” (danzón), “El Jimagua” on “Coge el Camarón” (son), Pipo on Orquesta Revé’s “Rumberos Latinoamericanos” (guaguancó), Del Puerto on Irakere’s “Yo Soy de la Habana” plus two features from The Legendary Irakere in London, Vergara on Rumbavana’s “El Que No Se Movió Perdió Su Tiempo,” and Juan Formell on Los Van Van’s “Que Sorpresa” (songo). A short farewell melody by Del Puerto closes the book.

Strengths

• Provenance. A primary source, written by the men who played the music, transcribed “as originally performed,” with the recordings included. The dedication — “to all those bassists whose love, fantasy, and flavor contributed to the development of our music” — sets the tone; there’s even a photo of Cachaíto, Del Puerto, and Carlitos Del Puerto Jr. together in Havana, 1993.
• The chronological architecture. Learning the danzón and son cells first, then watching every later style derive from them, gives you a mental filing system a style-by-style pattern book never provides.
• The clave chapter. A dozen-odd pages that dissolve most of the fear around 3-2 versus 2-3, including the rule that traditional bass patterns can’t be “out of clave” by themselves. I’ve watched that sentence relax more rhythm-section players than any workshop.
• Transcriptions with names attached. You’re not studying “a son bass line” — you’re studying El Jimagua’s choices on a specific record, and Formell’s songo on another. That specificity is where the real style lives.
• Bilingual text. For mixed-language ensembles or Spanish-speaking students, the parallel columns are genuinely useful, not a gimmick.

Weaknesses

• It’s terse. Explanations run a paragraph where you often want a page. The son montuno section name-drops changüí, sucusucu, fiongo, and bachata oriental in one sentence and moves on. You’ll be listening hard to fill the gaps.
• No method, no technique. Nothing on fingering, tone, or how to physically execute the anticipations at tempo. The gap between Chapter One’s two-bar patterns and Chapter Three’s transcriptions is a cliff.
• Not everything is on the audio. “El Que No Se Movió Perdió Su Tiempo,” “Lo Que Va a Pasar,” “Que Sorpresa,” the Final Variations, and the Cachao study are all marked “not recorded.” For a cover that advertises audio of each exercise, that stings.
• Loose editing in places. On the “Que Sorpresa” page, the English header says “Music Example #8” while the Spanish column says “Pieza Musical #7.” Small stuff, but it’s there.
• It stops in 1994. Songo is the frontier here; timba, which exploded in Havana just a couple of years later, doesn’t exist in this book. Not the authors’ fault, but a modern reader should know it.

How to actually practice with this book

1. Memorize the two mother cells first — the bajo básico of the danzón and of the son tradicional on page 2 — until you can sing either one while clapping son clave. Everything else in the book descends from these two bars.
2. Work Chapter One in order, with the audio. The chronology is the pedagogy. Don’t cherry-pick the cha-cha-chá because you have a gig; the reason that line works is sitting three pages earlier.
3. Sing the anticipations before you play them. The bajo anticipado means hearing the next chord’s root a beat early — roots, fifths, octaves, over and over. This is interval ear training as much as bass technique; Molly Ann Radley’s ear training book pairs well with this material.
4. Camp in the “Cuban Tumbaos” pages. One tumbao per week: learn it, transpose it, always with a clave loop running, and respect the clave marking (Son 2-3, Rumba 3-2…) under each one.
5. Treat Chapter Three as transcription study. Find the source records (The Legendary Irakere in London is easy to locate) and play along with the recordings themselves.
6. Pianists: put the tumbaos in your left hand and your montuno in the right. If they don’t lock, you’re almost certainly ignoring the anticipation.

How it compares

• vs. The Latin Bass Book (Oscar Stagnaro & Chuck Sher): three times the size, covers Brazilian, Caribbean, and South American styles too, and is built like a modern method with extensive play-alongs. It’s the better course; Del Puerto/Vergara is the better document. Serious Latin bassists end up with both.
• vs. Funkifying the Clave (Lincoln Goines & Robby Ameen): the New York fusion application — clave-based grooves for bass and drum set together. It assumes you already know what this book teaches.
• vs. The Salsa Guidebook (Rebeca Mauleón): the natural companion, from the same publisher and this book’s own co-editor — whole-band scores, piano montunos, arranging. Read them together and the rhythm section stops being a mystery.
• vs. the salsa chapter in Levine’s Jazz Theory Book: Levine gives Latin jazz a few respectful pages; this book is where those pages point. If Latin jazz is a flavor for you, Levine may suffice — if it’s a language, you need the source.

Rating breakdown

Criterion	Score	Why
Clarity	4/5	Clean bilingual prose and readable notation, but explanations are compressed — expect rereads and outside listening.
Depth	4.5/5	From 1879 Matanzas to Formell’s songo with named-source transcriptions; only timba’s absence dates it.
Practicality	4/5	The tumbao library and clave rules go straight to the bandstand; no technique guidance, and several pieces are missing from the audio.
Value	5/5	Sixty-three pages carrying decades of bandstand knowledge you cannot get elsewhere in print.
Overall	4.5/5	Not a method — a primary source. For Cuban bass, still the true one, thirty years on.