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The Music Blog Entry 113

February 17 2017

Thrash Metal Vs. The Cuban Son

In today's blog post we will once again be doing in in depth comparison of two largely different music genres. The genres for this week are Thrash Metal and the Cuban Son. Thrash Metal, often referred to simply as thrash, is a subgenre of metal that was born in the late 80s early 90s with its biggest influencers being Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. The origin of Thrash Metal comes from a mixing of the New British metal movement that was happening at the time (Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, MotorHead) as well as a desire of bans to differentiate themselves from Glam metal which was largely popular at the time (Motley Crue, Alice Cooper, Kiss). What sets Thrash Metal apart from other forms of metal is its fast tempo, complex guitar solos, and "Snarling" vocals.  A good example of thrash metal is the song "Raining Blood" by Slayer from their 1986 album Reign in Blood. The song consist of nearly all the elements commun in thrash metal and the entire album it is from is credited with aiding in the pioneering of the genre. The Cuban son came to be in 1917 in Havana as an altered form of the popular dance music the danzon. The Cuban son was the result of mixing more with african culture and the use of more instruments of African nature such as bongos and claves. The Cuban Son also included the changing of many different instruments that were common at the time, it largely used trumpet as well as bass. A good example for Cuban Son is the 1987 son "Chan Chan" by Compay Segundo. Compay Segundo was a famous musician from Cuba that was known for making Sons and "Chan Chan" was one of his most famous. Raining Blood by Slayer a thrash metal song and "Chan Chan" by Compay Segundo a Cuban son. At first glance the two songs and genres could not be more different but a further in depth study shows that they have quite a few similarities.  We will now divin to study the structure and harmony of the two songs in order to see the similarities between the distinct genres of music.

Structure

We will start by looking at the structure of the two songs. Both songs have similar structures and you can see this when you map it out. At the simplest of explanations both songs from the two genres follow the same ABA structure for the music. The songs are not completely the same in structure, but by diving in deeper it is clearly visible that the structure goes deeper than songs only following the ABA type of structure. To see this it is first important to map out the structure of the two songs. We will start out with our Cuban Son "Chan Chan" by mapping out the structure.  While mapping out the structure I found that it went along the lines of  A(1-12)B(12-21)A'(21-25)C(25-33)A'(33-41)D(41-49)A'(49-57)C(25-33)A'(33-41)B(58-61)A(61-65)E(65-79). As you can see "Chan Chan has many different repeating parts such as A' at 21 and A' at 49(Pictured below).

Know we have too look at the structure of "Raining Blood". When written out the structure comes to be A(1-13)B(13-25)A'(25-39)B(39-51)A(51-59)B(59-69)A'(69-77)C(77-82). The structure of raining blood is similar to "Chan Chan as it also has repeating sections such as A at the beginning and A at 51 (pictured below). The Beginning of the two songs also follow the exact same starting structure. They both start with a clear ABA'. The ending structure is also quiet similar. In "Chan Chan" it ends with BAE and in raining blood it ends with BA'C. In both songs the E and C structure that they end with is a structure that is previously unheard in the rest of the song, so the two end with a new part that is introduced. Except for the fact that In "raining Blood" it has an A' before the end rather than an A, the two songs end following a very similar structure. The big difference on the structure is that "Chan Chan" is split into six parts while "Raining Blood" is split into four parts. Despite this the difference between the structure of the two songs is not that large and part of the different number of structure parts can be due to the fact that "Chan Chan" is nearly ten seconds longer than "Raining Blood" which leaves room for at least one extra section. That means that the difference in number of sections in the two different pieces does not make that much of a difference. What is important is the large number of similarities between the structure of the two songs. Both "Raining Blood" and "Chan Chan" follow the ABA form of structuring their songs and the beginning and ending structures of the two songs are nearly identical.

Harmony

The second thing that connects the two genres and songs is the harmony. By only listening you can not hear any similarities, but if you stop and look at the two pieces you can see the similarities. Specifically in the Chord progression of the two songs. Both"Chan Chan" and "Raining Blood" are songs where the instrumentation of guitar play a big role in the piece. Being a Cuban Son "Chan Chan" makes use of a more traditional guitar while "Raining Blood" being a thrash metal piece uses electric guitar. Despite the different types of guitar and guitar style used they both use chord progressions. In "Raining Blood" the key is E minor and the Guitarist uses eleven different chords.

"Chan Chan" is played in the key of D minor and uses five different chords, D minor, F, G minor, A7, and D minor 6. One quick notable similarities is that both songs are in a minor key.  The common Chord progression in "Chan Chan" is Dm to F to Gm to A7. The roman numeral for this progression is i III iv v.

For raining blood the chord progression is E G B. The Roman numeral for this progression is i III v.

So both songs use similar chord progressions. The i III v chords are very common in both pieces. The progression of i to III especially so. The i III progression appears several times throughout both the Cuban Son "Chan Chan" and the Thrash Metal piece "Raining Blood"

As seen in the picture above from "Raining Blood" the i to III progression appears five times in only three measures of the song.

The picture above from"Chan Chan" shows how it to also repeatedly uses the i to III progression through as Dm is almost always followed by the F chord in the song. The total chord progression for the section is i III vi v, and the chord progression in "Raining Blood" is i III v. In the two chord progressions three of the four chords are the same and except for the missing vi chord in "Raining Blood" the two songs generally follow a similar chord progression. Both songs also have the same cadence at the end. They both end with a v i cadence. Although the cadence in "Chan Chan" is a v i6 they are still very similar and the difference is not that much.

As seen from the picture both "Chan Chan" (below) and "Raining Blood" (above) use the v i cadence at the end of their songs. On last use of harmony to mention in both pieces is that for both pieces melody is song by the voice with guitar playing accompaniment to create the harmony.

(Voice and Guitar creating harmony in "Raining Blood" (above))

(Voice and Guitar creating harmony in "Chan Chan" (below))

Both the Cuban Son and Thrash metal have harmony and by looking at "raining Blood" and "Chan Chan" you can see that the harmony is used in similar ways.

Conclusion

In conclusion the Cuban Son and Thrash Metal came to be in two very different decades, and the two genres were influenced by very different cultures, but this does not mean they are completely different. Using the song "Chan Chan" by Compay Segundo to represent the genre of the Cuban Son, and the song "Raining Blood" by Slayer to represent the genre of Thrash Metal we are able to better see the similarities between the two genres that at first seem completely different. Through the study we were able to find similarities in structure. With how both use the ABA structure as well as the clear example of similar structure in the two pieces. We were also able to find the similarities in harmony. Through similar cadence and chord progression in both pieces, as well as similar way of creating harmony through instrumentation. In the end we found that the two genres were not as different as they first appeared.

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Word Count: 1543

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Source: https://danieltheviolin.blogspot.com/

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