folkloric/jazz fusion, their experiments changed Cuban popular music, Latin jazz, and salsa. Another important Cuban jazz musician is pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, whose innovative jazz guajeos revolutionized Cuban-style piano in the 1980s. Like the musicians of his generation who founded the timba era, Rubalcaba is a product of the Cuban music education system. He studied both piano and drums. Rubalcaba began his classical musical training at Manuel Saumell Conservatory at age 9, where he had to choose piano; he moved up to "middle-school" at Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, and finally earned his degree in music composition from Havana's Institute of Fine Arts in 1983. By that time he was already playing in clubs and music halls in Havana. Many Cuban jazz bands, such as the saxophonist Tony Martinez's group, perform at a level few non-Cubans can match rhythmically. The clave matrix offers infinite possibilities for rhythmic textures in jazz. The Cuban-born drummer Dafnis Prieto in particular, has been a trailblazer in expanding the parameters of clave experimentation. Afro-Cuban singer Daymé Arocena has been described as a "cross between Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin". Clave license More than a half century ago, Mario Bauzá developed arranging in-clave to an art. Another name for clave is guide-pattern, and that is how Bauzá related to it. He taught Tito Puente, and Puente's arrangers learned from him. The techniques were passed down from one generation to the next. Many educated Cuban musicians reject the idea of 3-2/2-3 clave. Dafnis Prieto and Alain Pérez reject the concept. Many younger musicians reject the concept of "clave rules". Pérez states, "I just don't treat the clave as a study or a profound analysis conceived around where it overlaps and where it comes in. I didn't learn it in that way". Bobby Sanabria laments the pervasiveness of this attitude in Cuba. "The lack of clave consciousness in Cuba is starting to be felt more and more where the rhythmic equilibrium established by the clave direction is being sacrificed due to lack of knowledge in how to work with it from an arranging standpoint by young arrangers especially in the timba movement" Perhaps Juan Formell, founder of Los Van Van, summed up this contemporary Cuban clave attitude best. "We Cubans like to think we have 'clave license'...and we don't feel obsessed about the clave as many others do". References Afro-Cuban culture Cuban styles of music Jazz genres