Exotic as an unfamiliar fruit, the rhythms plunge down the stairs and out on to George's Street. A simple motif on the congas is joined by a metallic-sounding cross-rhythm, slow but sophisticated, urgent yet also, somehow, lazy.
Everybody knows what Cuban music sounds like: very few, in Ireland at least, know how it is actually put together. But over the past week, an intensive series of workshops, dance classes and public performances by three visiting Cuban musicians organised by Walton's New School of Music as the ESB World Music Summer School, have recreated a tiny slice of Havana in downtown Dublin.
Day two, and inside a light-filled upstairs rehearsal room a percussion seminar is in full flow. As the rhythms are dissected and repeated, over and over, the students clutch their congas with expressions which range from bafflement to trepidation. "Hear these?" asks the shaven-headed instructor, Simon Monserrat, manipulating his congas with enviable ease. "Ghost notes. They're not the main beat, but if you take them away, you gonna lose something. OK, let's go..." Manfully, the class follows his lead. Now they're being asked to add a bit of rhythmic chanting to the mix. "To-ma cho-co-la-te/Paga lo que de-be," they go, gaining in volume as they gain, visibly and audibly, in confidence. This is hard work: anybody who hoped for a week of messing around with mambos must have been sorely disappointed. But the patience, humour and energy of the Cubans is infectious. Gradually, trepidation gives way to exhilaration. "Break," announces Simon, eventually. ["]Five minutes. And this time, take a break - please! Go and think about a TV programme, about what you're gonna do tonight: about anything other than rhythm."
Further along the hallway, three of the advanced students are deeply involved in a session led by the pianist Elio Villafranco. Apart from being the personification of cool, his braided hair caught back in a set of black and white beads with a long, coloured tail down the back completing the effect, Elio has musical charisma by the bucketload.
The third of the visiting Cuban trio, George "Chiqui" Dixon, wanders in, picks up what looks like an empty bottle of washingup liquid and a stick, and begins to play along. Within seconds everyone who is supposed to be on a break is peeping around the door, drawn to the music like bees to honey.
This is the sort of vibe you'd never get from listening to a record or watching a group on stage. When they jam together, or chat about how things are in Cuba, the know-how these musicians are passing on is priceless, and the students sense it. As the director of Walton's New School of Music, John Mardirosian, explains, the school has, since it was set up in 1994, seen its role as one of crossing musical boundaries - and exploring some of the musical avenues which had been largely ignored by the mainstream music colleges up to that time. (Time changes everything - remember the Walton's music programme on RTE and its mantra: "If you feel like singing, sing an Irish song.")
With courses in a wide variety of subjects from Flamenco Guitar to Music Technology, Introducing Bodhran to Latin Percussion alongside more conventional piano and singing lessons, it made sense, says Mardirosian, to run a world music summer school which would be both a nod to the traditional Irish summer school and a celebration of burgeoning Irish musical and cultural diversity.
It was Cuco Castellanos, who came to Ireland from Havana in 1996 to teach percussion and jazz piano at the school, who suggested making it a Cuban music week - and with the help of sponsorship from the ESB, a intensive, wide-ranging programme was put in place involving everything from public dance classes to children's music workshops at the National Concert Hall.
A classically-trained violist of Armenian extraction, Mardirosian believes it's essential to break down the formal divisions between "traditional" and "classical" in the world of music education: "Classical technique has a great deal to teach other traditions," he says. "But there are skills that traditional musicians have, which classical musicians have largely lost - the skills of improvisation, for instance, or of playing by ear."
A broadly-based approach can, he says, enrich musicians from all backgrounds. "Part of the joy of a music school is listening to something going on next door which is completely different to what you're doing yourself."
It all sounds suspiciously like fun - and a long way from scales, arpeggios and grade exams. But though Walton's provides conventionally structured, exam-oriented tuition for those who wish to pursue such a path, Mardirosian is critical of the conventional conservatoire emphasis on virtuosity at all costs. "Of course perfection in performance is something to aspire to," he says. "But to become a classical soloist is way beyond the reach of most people. The majority of music students are better served by a broad-band musical education with an emphasis on a breadth of musical understanding." Hence the broad sweep of the Cuban week, with its focus, not just on the music itself, but on the folkloric and religious traditions behind it. As well as the fun, of course.
`IF you got meat, show the meat - if you got bones, show me the bones..." At the first of two public dance workshops at the YMCA in Aungier Street, an assortment of salsa students of every imaginable shape and size gazes wistfully at George "Chiqui" Dixon as he twirls and sashays across the floor.
When he tells them that by the end of the class they'll all be dancing like this, they think he's joking. That's before he gets them working - one, two, three, one, two, three - breaking the complex steps into manageable chunks, repeating them over and over. By the end of the first hour they're sweating, but convinced.
The final event of the week is a gig at Sunday afternoon's mardi gras in Smithfield Village organised by SARI (Sports Against Racism Ireland). Damp spells and occasional drizzle would seem to mitigate against a Caribbean atmosphere, but with Elio at the piano, an ensemble from the week-long workshops on congas and the indefatigable Cuco on drums, sunny smiles and warm applause - not to mention a bit of hip-swivelling - begin to break out around the square. "We hope to do this again next year," declares Cuco. To which the only answer, though it may not be strictly ballroom, is a heartfelt "Amen".
