Genre guides

Eight rhythms, explained properly

What the clave actually governs, why the salsa bass leaves the downbeat empty, what a guira does to a bolero, how cumbia's accent drags, and where salsaton puts the dembow.

• Salsa

  Salsa is a Cuban rhythmic system played by a New York band. Underneath it sits the clave, a five stroke pattern across two bars that every other part answers to. The piano plays a montuno, the bass plays a tumbao that lands off the downbeat, and the horns arrive in the mambo section.

• Bachata

  Bachata is Dominican guitar music in four, built from five parts: a lead requinto guitar, a rhythm segunda, an electric bass, a bongo and a guira scraper. Dancers step on beats one, two and three and mark the fourth with a tap or hip movement, which is why the count feels like three steps and a lift.

• Latin jazz

  Latin jazz is jazz played over Latin American rhythm rather than a swung ride cymbal. The single biggest change is the subdivision: quavers are played straight and even instead of with the triplet lilt of swing. Underneath, the rhythm section plays a clave based or baiao based pattern, and the piano plays a montuno instead of comping freely.

• Afro-Cuban

  Afro-Cuban music is the body of tradition that salsa, mambo, timba and Latin jazz all draw from. Its core is rumba, a voice and percussion form with no melody instruments, and the sacred bata drum repertoire. Both are organised around a bell pattern and a clave, and both are played in cycles rather than in songs with an ending.

• Merengue

  Merengue is Dominican dance music in a fast two, driven by three things: a tambora drum played with one hand and one stick, a metal guira scraper running continuously, and either an accordion or a horn section carrying the melody. The step is a simple march, which is why a room can pick it up in one bar.

• Cumbia

  Cumbia began on Colombia's Caribbean coast as a courtship dance with drums and flutes, and spread across Latin America to become the most widely adapted rhythm in the region. Its signature is a mid tempo four four with a dragging accent on the second half of each beat, which gives the music its unmistakable limp.

• Salsaton

  Salsaton is salsa played over a reggaeton dembow rather than a conga tumbao. The salsa side supplies the clave, the piano montuno and the horn writing; the reggaeton side supplies the kick and snare pattern and the deep sub bass. The two grids do not line up neatly, and that friction is the whole point.

• Bolero

  The bolero in Latin music is a slow romantic song form that began in Santiago de Cuba in the late nineteenth century. It is in four four, unhurried, and built around a five note figure called the cinquillo. It shares only its name with the Spanish bolero, which is in three and much older.