Bésame Mucho and Song for My Father: Latin-Jazz Songs for String Quintet
- Price $18.99
- By Renata Bratt
- Sheet Music
- Published by String Letter Publishing
Add the Afro-Cuban and Latin beats of Bésame Mucho and Song for My Father to your repertoire.
(Excerpted from the Performance Notes)
One of the most recorded songs ever, Bésame Mucho (Kiss Me a Lot Right Now) was written by a teenaged Mexican girl named Consuelo Velasquez in 1940. The lyrics of Bésame Mucho were changed into English by Sunny Skylar and the song has been recorded, as a vocal performance or instrumental, by hundreds of great performers, including the Beatles, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Placido Domingo, and Frank Sinatra.
Vibrato may be applied freely in this arrangement of Bésame Mucho. It is similar to a type of Afro-Cuban music called the charanga, which uses lots of strings. Throughout the arrangement, there are triplet quarter notes played against eighth notes. This rhythm of two-against-three is very African in origin and makes for an extremely syncopated sound.
Click here to listen to a sample of "Bésame Mucho."
Song for My Father, composed in 1964 by American jazz pianist Horace Silver, is an homage to Silver's father, a native of the Cape Verde Islands.
The bass riff and accompaniment in the four-bar prelude to the tune Song for My Father is a form of the Afro-Cuban style called clave. The clave beat is found in the viola and cello parts—it is a two-bar repeating rhythm. The bass part keeps everyone together, but starts on the upbeat to the first beat of the bar.
