This week in class we learn "the key" to Caribbean music -- the Afro-Cuban clave. 

The Latin/Caribbean “clave” is the pattern of beats that lays the rhythmic foundation for many genres of Latin music, from Cuban son to Jamaican mento to Puerto Rican salsa and beyond. One may say the clave “originated” in Cuba due to the fact that Cuban “son” music was the first to feature a full manifestation of a rhythm that mixed syncopated African beats with Spanish songs, but really the clave is a pattern that developed in Africa over hundreds if not thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years and just happened to accompany enslaved Africans on their forced passage to the colonized West.    

There are two basic forms of the clave, each of which spans two "measures" of four beats each. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4, 5 - 6 - 7 -8.

-- the "3-2 son clave" has three beats in the first measure and two in the second.

-- the "2-3 son clave" has two beats in the first measure, three in the second.