The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European (especially Spanish) music. Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban music is often considered one of the richest and most influential regional music in the world. For instance, the
son cubano
Son cubano is a genre of music and dance that originated in the highlands of eastern Cuba during the late 19th century. It is a syncretic genre that blends elements of Spanish and African origin. Among its fundamental Hispanic components are th ...
merges an adapted Spanish guitar (tres), melody, harmony, and lyrical traditions with Afro-Cuban percussion and rhythms. Almost nothing remains of the original native traditions, since the native population was exterminated in the 16th century.
Since the 19th-century Cuban music has been hugely popular and influential throughout the world. It has been perhaps the most popular form of regional music since the introduction of recording technology. Cuban music has contributed to the development of a wide variety of genres and musical styles around the globe, most notably in
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
, the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
,
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...
, and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
. Examples include
rhumba
Rhumba, also known as ballroom rumba, is a genre of ballroom music and dance that appeared in the East Coast of the United States during the 1930s. It combined American big band music with Afro-Cuban rhythms, primarily the son cubano, but also co ...
,
Afro-Cuban jazz
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm.{{cite web, Cuba: Son and Afro-Cuban ...
,
salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
,
soukous
Soukous (from French '' secousse'', "shock, jolt, jerk") is a genre of dance music from Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville. It derived from Congolese rumba in the 1960s, becoming known for its fast dance rhythms and intricate guitar improv ...
, many West African re-adaptations of Afro-Cuban music (
Orchestra Baobab
Orchestra Baobab is a Senegalese band established in 1970 as the house band of the Baobab Club in Dakar. Many of the band's original members had previously played with Star Band de Dakar in the 1960s. Directed by ''timbalero'' and vocalist Balla S ...
,
Africando Africando is a musical project formed in 1992 to unite New York-based salsa musicians with Senegalese vocalists. Musicians from other African countries were later included under the name Africando All Stars.
Salsa has been a hugely popular style in ...
), Spanish fusion genres (notably with
flamenco
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and ...
), and a wide variety of genres in Latin America.
Overview
Large numbers of enslaved Africans and European, mostly Spanish, immigrants came to
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
and brought their own forms of music to the island. European dances and folk musics included
zapateo
Zapateo ( en, shoe tapping) is a dance form rooted in the Spanish flamenco and before that, in the ancient cultural influences imported in to Europe by the Gypsies.
Zapateo, which later produced the more famous Malambos dance, arrived in South Am ...
,
fandango
Fandango is a lively partner dance originating from Portugal and Spain, usually in triple meter, traditionally accompanied by guitars, castanets, or hand-clapping. Fandango can both be sung and danced. Sung fandango is usually bipartite: it has ...
,
paso doble
Pasodoble (Spanish language, Spanish: ''double step'') is a fast-paced Spanish military march used by infantry troops. Its speed allowed troops to give 120 steps per minute (double the average of a regular unit, hence its name). This military ...
and
retambico
The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European (especially Spanish) music. Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban mu ...
. Later, northern European forms like
minuet
A minuet (; also spelled menuet) is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in time. The English word was adapted from the Italian ''minuetto'' and the French ''menuet''.
The term also describes the musical form that accompa ...
,
gavotte
The gavotte (also gavot, gavote, or gavotta) is a French dance, taking its name from a folk dance of the Gavot, the people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné in the southeast of France, where the dance originated, according to one source. Ac ...
,
mazurka
The mazurka (Polish: ''mazur'' Polish ball dance, one of the five Polish national dances and ''mazurek'' Polish folk dance') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character de ...
,
contradanza
''Contradanza'' (also called ''contradanza criolla'', ''danza'', ''danza criolla'', or ''habanera'') is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th centu ...
, and the
waltz
The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position.
History
There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wa ...
appeared among urban whites. There was also an immigration of Chinese
indentured
An indenture is a legal contract that reflects or covers a debt or purchase obligation. It specifically refers to two types of practices: in historical usage, an indentured servant status, and in modern usage, it is an instrument used for commercia ...
laborers later in the 19th century.
Fernando Ortiz, the first great Cuban folklorist, described Cuba's musical innovations as arising from the interplay ('transculturation') between enslaved Africans settled on large
sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
s and Spaniards from different regions such as Andalusia and
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...
. The enslaved Africans and their descendants made many percussion instruments and preserved rhythms they had known in their homeland. The most important instruments were the drums, of which, there were originally about fifty different types; today only the
bongos
Bongos ( es, bongó) are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. They are struck with both hands, most commonly in an eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' (hammer). The ...
,
congas
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest) ...
and
batá drums are regularly seen (the
timbales
Timbales () or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size.Orovio, Helio 1981. ''Diccionario de la música cubana: biográfico ...
are descended from kettle drums in Spanish military bands). Also important are the
claves
Claves (; ) are a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of short, wooden sticks about 20–25 centimeters (8–10 inches) long and about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in diameter. Although traditionally made of wood (typically rosewood, ebony o ...
, two short hardwood batons, and the
cajón
A cajón (; "box", "crate" or "drawer") is a box-shaped percussion instrument originally from Peru, played by slapping the front or rear faces (generally thin plywood) with the hands, fingers, or sometimes implements such as brushes, mallets, ...
, a wooden box, originally made from crates. Claves are still used often, and wooden boxes (''cajones'') were widely used during periods when the drum was banned. In addition, there are other percussion instruments in use for African-origin religious ceremonies. Chinese immigrants contributed the ''
corneta china'' (Chinese cornet), a
Chinese reed instrument still played in the
comparsa
A comparsa is a group of singers, musicians and dancers that take part in carnivals and other festivities in Spain and Latin America. Its precise meaning depends on the specific regional celebration. The most famous comparsas are those that parti ...
s, or
carnival
Carnival is a Catholic Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival typi ...
groups, of
Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
.
The great instrumental contribution of the Spanish was their
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
, but even more important was the tradition of European
musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...
and techniques of
musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...
. Hernando de la Parra's archives give some of our earliest available information on Cuban music. He reported instruments including the
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
,
violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
and
vihuela
The vihuela () is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar (figure-of-eight form offering strength and portability) but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of t ...
. There were few professional musicians at the time, and fewer still of their songs survive. One of the earliest is ''Ma Teodora'', supposed to be related to a freed slave,
Teodora Ginés
Teodora Ginés (1530–1598) was a Dominican musician and composer. She is credited as the creator of the song titled "Son de la Má Teodora".
Life
Ginés was formerly a slave, born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, but was free ...
of Santiago de Cuba, who was famous for her compositions. The piece is said to be similar to 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century Spanish popular songs and dances.
Cuban music has its principal roots in Spain and West Africa, but over time has been influenced by diverse genres from different countries. Important among these are
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
(and its colonies in the Americas), and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Cuban music has been immensely influential in other countries. It contributed not only to the development of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and
salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
, but also to the Argentine
tango
Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...
, Ghanaian
high-life
Highlife is a music genre that started in present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its history as a colony of the British Empire and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It describes multiple local fusions of African metre and weste ...
, West African
Afrobeat
Afrobeat is a Nigerian music genre that involves the combination of West African musical styles (such as traditional Yoruba music and highlife) and American funk, jazz, and soul influences, with a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting ...
, Dominican
Bachata and
Merengue, Colombian
Cumbia
Cumbia refers to a number of musical rhythms and folk dance traditions of Latin America, generally involving musical and cultural elements from American Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans during colonial times, and Europeans. Examples include:
...
and Spanish Nuevo
flamenco
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and ...
and to the Arabo-Cuban music (
Hanine Y Son Cubano) developed by
Michel Elefteriades in the 1990s.
The African beliefs and practices certainly influenced Cuba's music. Polyrhythmic
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
is an inherent part of African music, as the melody is part of European music. Also, in African tradition, percussion is always joined to song and dance, and a particular social setting.
[Ortiz, Fernando 1950. ''La Afrocania de la musica folklorica de Cuba''. La Habana revised ed 1965.] The result of the meeting of European and African cultures is that most Cuban popular music is creolized. This creolization of Cuban life has been happening for a long time, and by the 20th century, elements of African belief, music, and dance were well integrated into popular and folk forms.
18th and 19th centuries
![Saumell](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Saumell.jpg)
Among internationally heralded composers of the "serious" genre can be counted the Baroque composer
Esteban Salas y Castro (1725–1803), who spent much of his life teaching and writing music for the Church. He was followed in the Cathedral of Santiago de Cuba by the priest
Juan París
Juan París (Barcelona, 1759 – Santiago de Cuba, 10 July 1845) was a priest and composer in Spanish Cuba.
He followed Esteban Salas y Castro in the Cathedral of Santiago de Cuba. His election as ''Maestro de Capilla'' (choirmaster), after th ...
(1759–1845). París was an exceptionally industrious man and an important composer. He encouraged continuous and diverse musical events.
p181 Aside from rural music and Afro-Cuban folk music, the most popular kind of urban Creole dance music in the 19th century was the contradanza, which commenced as a local form of the English country dance and the derivative French contredanse and Spanish contradanza. While many contradanzas were written for dance, from the mid-century several were written as light-classical parlor pieces for piano. The first distinguished composer in this style was
Manuel Saumell
Manuel Saumell Robredo (19 April 1818 – 14 August 1870), was a Cuban composer known for his invention and development of genuinely creolized forms of music. For this reason he gets the credit for being the first to cultivate Cuban musical nation ...
(1818–1870), who is sometimes accordingly hailed as the father of Cuban creole musical development. According to Helio Orovio, "After Saumell's visionary work, all that was left to do was to develop his innovations, all of which profoundly influenced the history of Cuban nationalist musical movements."
![Ignacio Cervantes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Ignacio_Cervantes.jpg)
In the hands of his successor,
Ignacio Cervantes
Ignacio Cervantes Kawanag (Havana, 31 July 1847 – Havana, 29 April 1905) was a Cuban pianist and composer. He was influential in the creolization of Cuban music.
A child prodigy, he was taught by pianist Juan Miguel Joval, later by composer ...
Kavanagh, the piano idiom related to the contradanza achieved even greater sophistication. Cervantes was called by
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
a "Cuban
Chopin" because of his Chopinesque piano compositions. Cervantes' reputation today rests almost solely upon his famous forty-one ''Danzas Cubanas'', which Carpentier said, "occupy the place that the ''Norwegian Dances'' of
Grieg or the ''Slavic Dances'' of
Dvořák occupy in the music of their respective countries". Cervantes' never-finished opera, ''Maledetto'', is forgotten.
[Carpentier, Alejo 2001 ]945
Year 945 ( CMXLV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* January 27 – The co-emperors Stephen and Constantine are overthrown barely ...
''Music in Cuba''. Minneapolis MN.
In the 1840s, the habanera emerged as a languid vocal song using the contradanza rhythm. (Non-Cubans sometimes called Cuban contradanzas "habaneras.") The habanera went on to become popular in Spain and elsewhere. The Cuban contradanza/Danza was also an important influence on the Puerto Rican Danza, which went on to enjoy its own dynamic and distinctive career lasting through the 1930s. In Cuba, in the 1880s the contradanza/Danza gave birth to the danzón, which effectively superseded it in popularity.
Laureano Fuentes (1825–1898) came from a family of musicians and wrote the first opera to be composed on the island, ''La Hija de Jefté'' (Jefte's daughter). This was later lengthened and staged under the title ''Seila''. His numerous works spanned all genres.
Gaspar Villate (1851–1891) produced abundant and wide-ranging work, all centered on opera.
p239 José White (1836–1918), a mulatto of a Spanish father and an Afrocuban mother, was a composer and a violinist of international merit. He learned to play sixteen instruments, and lived, variously, in Cuba, Latin America, and Paris. His most famous work is ''La Bella Cubana'', a habanera.
![Appletons' Gottschalk Louis Moreau](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Appletons%27_Gottschalk_Louis_Moreau.jpg)
During the middle years of the 19th century, a young American musician came to Havana:
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (May 8, 1829 – December 18, 1869) was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent most of his working career outside the United States.
Life and car ...
(1829–1869), whose father was a Jewish businessman from London, and his mother a white creole of French Catholic background. Gottschalk was brought up mostly by his black grandmother and nurse Sally, both from
Saint-Domingue
Saint-Domingue () was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city in the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer ...
. He was a piano prodigy who had listened to the music and seen the dancing in
Congo Square
Congo Square (french: Place Congo) is an open space, now within Louis Armstrong Park, which is located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. The square is famous for its inf ...
,
from childhood. His period in Cuba lasted from 1853 to 1862, with visits to
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
and
Martinique
Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in th ...
squeezed in. He composed many creolized pieces, such as the habanera ''
Bamboula, Op. 2'' (Danse de negres) (1845), the title referring to a bass Afro-Caribbean drum; ''El cocoye'' (1853), a version of a rhythmic melody already present in Cuba; the contradanza ''Ojos criollos (Danse cubaine)'' (1859) and a version of ''María de la O'', which refers to a Cuban mulatto singer. These numbers made use of typical Cuban rhythmic patterns. At one of his farewell concerts he played his ''Adiós a Cuba'' to huge applause and shouts of 'bravo!' Unfortunately, his score for the work has not survived. In February 1860 Gottschalk produced a huge work ''La nuit des tropiques'' in Havana. The work used about 250 musicians and a choir of 200 singers plus a
tumba francesa
Tumba francesa is a secular Afro-Cuban genre of dance, song, and drumming that emerged in Oriente, Cuba. It was introduced by slaves from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (which would later become the nation of Haiti) whose owners resettled ...
group from
Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
. He produced another huge concert the following year, with new material. These shows probably dwarfed anything seen in the island before or since, and no doubt were unforgettable for those who attended.
[Sublette, Ned 2004. ''Cuba and its music: from the first drums to the mambo''. Chicago.]p147
20th-century classical and art music
![José Marín Varona](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADn_Varona.jpg)
Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th a number of composers excel within the Cuban music panorama. They cultivated genres such as the popular song and the concert
lied
In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French s ...
, dance music, the
zarzuela
() is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. The etymology of the name is uncertain, but some propose it may derive from the name of ...
and the vernacular theatre, as well as symphonic music. Among others, we should mention
Hubert de Blanck (1856-1932); José Mauri (1856-1937); Manuel Mauri (1857-1939);
José Marín Varona
José Marín Varona (Camagüey, March 10, 1859Havana, September 17, 1912) was a Cuban composer, conductor, pianist and professor.Marín Varona, José: Orovio, Helio: uban Music from A to Z, DukeUniversity Press, Durham, U. S., 2004
Biographical ...
;
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes (3 April 1874, in Havana – 7 September 1944) was a Cuban composer, and an author of books on the history of Cuban folk music.
The outstanding habanera ''Tú'', written when he was sixteen, was his best-known com ...
(1874-1944);
Jorge Anckermann
Jorge Anckermann (22 March 1877 – 3 February 1941) was a Cuban pianist, composer and bandleader. Havana-born, he started in music at eight with his father. At age ten he was able to substitute in a trio. In 1892, he went to Mexico as musica ...
(1877-1941); Luis Casas Romero (1882-1950) and Mario Valdés Costa (1898-1930).
![Gonzalo Roig Lobo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Gonzalo_Roig_Lobo.jpg)
The work of
José Marín Varona
José Marín Varona (Camagüey, March 10, 1859Havana, September 17, 1912) was a Cuban composer, conductor, pianist and professor.Marín Varona, José: Orovio, Helio: uban Music from A to Z, DukeUniversity Press, Durham, U. S., 2004
Biographical ...
links the Cuban musical activity from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In 1896, the composer included in his zarzuela "El Brujo" the first Cuban
guajira which has been historically documented.
About this piece, composer
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes (3 April 1874, in Havana – 7 September 1944) was a Cuban composer, and an author of books on the history of Cuban folk music.
The outstanding habanera ''Tú'', written when he was sixteen, was his best-known com ...
said: "The honest critique of a not very far day will bestow the author of the immortal guajira of "El Brujo" the honor to which he is undoubtedly entitled at any time".
Gonzalo Roig
Gonzalo Roig Lobo (Havana, 20 July 1890 – Havana, 13 June 1970) was a Cuban composer, pianist, violinist and musical director. He was a pioneer of the symphonic movement in Cuba. His most popular works are the zarzuela ''Cecilia Valdés'' an ...
(1890–1970) was a major force in the first half of the century. A composer and orchestral director, he qualified in piano, violin and composition theory. In 1922 he was one of the founders of the National Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted. In 1927 he was appointed Director of the Havana School of Music. As a composer he specialized in the zarzuela, a musical theatre form, very popular up to World War II. In 1931 he co-founded a ''bufo'' company (comic theatre) at the ''
Teatro Martí
Teatro Martí is a Neoclassical theater in Havana, Cuba. It was inaugurated on 8 June 1884 as the Teatro Irijoa, named after its founder and owner Ricardo Irijoa, from the Basque Country, Spain. It was originall used for the performance of zarz ...
'' in Havana. He was the composer of the most well-known Cuban zarzuela, ''
Cecilia Valdés
''Cecilia Valdés'' is both a novel by the Cuban writer Cirilo Villaverde (1812–1894), and a zarzuela based on the novel. It is a work of importance for its quality, and its revelation of the interaction of classes and races in Havana, C ...
'', based on the famous 19th-century novel about a Cuban mulata. It was premiered in 1932. He founded various organizations and wrote frequently on musical topics.
One of the greatest Cuban pianist/composers of the 20th century was
Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (; August 7, 1896 – November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires. His over 600 compositions include songs and zarzuelas as ...
(1895–1963). Lecuona composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality. He was a prolific composer of songs and music for stage and film. His works consisted of
zarzuela
() is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. The etymology of the name is uncertain, but some propose it may derive from the name of ...
, Afro-Cuban and Cuban rhythms, suites and many songs that became Latin standards. They include ''Siboney'', ''
Malagueña'' and ''
The Breeze And I'' (''Andalucía''). In 1942 his great hit ''Always in my heart'' (''Siempre en mi Corazon'') was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song; it lost out to ''White Christmas''. The Ernesto Lecuona Symphonic Orchestra performed the premiere of Lecuona's ''Black Rhapsody'' in the Cuban Liberation Day Concert at Carnegie Hall on 10 October 1943.
[Orovio, Helio 2004. ''Cuban music from A to Z''. Duke University, Durham NC; Tumi, Bath.]
Although their music is rarely played today, "
Amadeo Roldán
Amadeo Roldán y Gardes (Paris, 12 June 1900 – Havana, 7 March 1939) was a Cuban composer and violinist. Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father. It was his mother, the pianist Albertina Gardes, who initiated her ch ...
(1900–1939) and
Alejandro García Caturla
Alejandro García Caturla (7 March 1906 – 12 November 1940) was a Cuban composer of art music and creolized Cuban themes.
Biography
Caturla was born in the town of Remedios, Villa Clara, Cuba. With only sixteen years old, in 1922, he won a ...
(1906–1940) were Cuba's symphonic revolutionaries during the first half of the 20th Century.
They both played a part in
Afrocubanismo
Afrocubanismo was an artistic and social movement in black-themed Cuban culture with origins in the 1920s, as in works by the cultural anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. The Afrocubanismo movement focused on establishing the legitimacy of black ident ...
: the movement in black-themed Cuban culture with origins in the 1920s, and extensively analysed by
Fernando Ortiz.
Roldan, born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father, came to Cuba in 1919 and became the concert-master (first-chair violin) of the new ''Orquesta Sinfónica de La Habana'' in 1922. There he met Caturla, at sixteen a second violin. Roldan's compositions included ''Overture on Cuban themes'' (1925), and two ballets: ''La Rebambaramba'' (1928) and ''El milagro de Anaquille'' (1929). There followed a series of ''Ritmicas'' and ''Poema negra'' (1930) and ''Tres toques'' (march, rites, dance) (1931). In ''Motivos de son'' (1934) he wrote eight pieces for voice and instruments based on the poet
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 17 July 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba. 's set of poems with the same title. His last composition was two ''Piezas infantiles'' for piano (1937). Roldan died young, at 38, of a disfiguring facial cancer (he had been an inveterate smoker).
![G](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/G._Caturla.jpg)
After his student days, Caturla lived all his life in the small central town of Remedios, where he became a lawyer to support his growing family. His ''Tres danzas cubanas'' for symphony orchestra was first performed in Spain in 1929. ''Bembe'' was premiered in Havana the same year. His ''Obertura cubana'' won first prize in a national contest in 1938. Caturla was murdered at 34 by a young gambler.
![Gramatges Carpentier](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Gramatges_Carpentier.jpg)
Founded in 1942 under the guidance of
José Ardévol
José Ardévol (13 March 1911, in Barcelona – 7 January 1981, in Havana) was a Cuban composer and conductor of Spanish derivation.
As a child, Ardévol studied under his father, Fernando, who was a musician and conductor. He emigrated to Cub ...
(1911–1981), a Catalan composer established in Cuba since 1930, the "Grupo de Renovación Musical" served as a platform for a group of young composers to develop a proactive movement with the purpose of improving and literally renovating the quality of the Cuban musical environment. During its existence from 1942 to 1948, the group organized numerous concerts at the Havana Lyceum in order to present their avant-garde compositions to the general public and fostered within its members the development of many future conductors, art critics, performers and professors. They also started a process of investigation and reevaluation of the Cuban music in general, discovering the outstanding work of Carlo Borbolla and promoting the compositions of Saumell, Cervantes, Caturla and Roldán. The "Grupo de Renovación Musical" included the following composers: Hilario González,
Harold Gramatges
Harold Gramatges (26 September 1918 – 16 December 2008) was a Cuban composer, pianist, and teacher.
Gramatges was born in Santiago, Cuba. In 1941, he entered the conservatory in Santiago de Cuba to study under professor Dulce María Serret ...
,
Julián Orbón Julián Orbón de Soto (August 7, 1925, Avilés, Spain – May 21, 1991, Miami, Florida was a Cuban composer who lived and composed in Spain, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States of America. Aaron Copland referred to Orbón as "Cuba's most gifte ...
, Juan Antonio Cámara, Serafín Pro, Virginia Fleites,
Gisela Hernández, Enrique Aparicio Bellver,
Argeliers León
Argeliers León Pérez (7 May 1918 – 23 February 1991) was a Cuban composer and musicologist.
Academic Background
He studied music at the Municipal Conservatory of Havana, Pedagogy at the University of Havana and completed specialized stud ...
, Dolores Torres and Edgardo Martín. Other contemporary Cuban composers that were little or no related at all to the "Groupo de Renovación Musical" were:
Aurelio de la Vega
Aurelio de la Vega (November 28, 1925 – February 12, 2022) was a Cuban-American composer, lecturer, essayist, and poet. He wrote numerous works in many forms and media and, from the early 1960s, was an active force on the United States musical ...
,
Joaquín Nin-Culmell
Joaquín María Nin-Culmell (5 September 190814 January 2004) was a Cuban-Spanish composer, internationally known concert pianist, and emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley.
Early life
Joaquín Nin-Culmell was born ...
,
Alfredo Diez Nieto
Alfredo Diez Nieto (25 October 1918 – 23 October 2021) was a Cuban composer, conductor, and professor. He taught composition at Instituto Musical Kohly, the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory, the National Art School, and the Instituto Superior de Art ...
and Natalio Galán.
Although, in Cuba, many composers have written both classical and popular creole types of music, the distinction became clearer after 1960, when (at least initially) the regime frowned on popular music and closed most of the night-club venues, whilst providing financial support for classical music rather than creole forms. From then on, most musicians have kept their careers on one side of the invisible line or the other. After the
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
in 1959, a new crop of classical musicians came onto the scene. The most important of these is guitarist
Leo Brouwer
Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida (born March 1, 1939) is a Cuban composer, conductor, and classical guitarist. He is a Member of Honour of the International Music Council.
Family
He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona y Casado. ...
, who have made significant contributions to the technique and repertoire of the modern classical guitar, and has been the director of the
National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba The National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba is the main institution dedicated to the performance of classical music in Cuba
History
Heir to the tradition of excellency established by its ancestor, the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symph ...
. His directorship in the early 1970s of the "Grupo de Experimentacion Sonora del ICAIC" was instrumental in the formation and consolidation of the
Nueva trova
Nueva Trova (, "new trova") is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes.
Nueva Trova has its roots in the traditional trova, but differs from it beca ...
movement.
Other important composers from the early post-revolution period that began in 1959 were:
Carlos Fariñas
Carlos Fariñas (1934 in Cienfuegos – 2002 in La Habana) was a Cuban composer. He was one of the most important masters of the Cuban avant-garde in the 1960s along with Leo Brouwer and Juan Blanco.
He received his firsts musical orientation ...
and
Juan Blanco
Juan Blanco (June 29, 1919 in Mariel, Cuba – November 5, 2008 in Havana) was the first Cuban composer to utilize electroacoustics, spatial music and multimedia.Orovio, Helio. Cuban music from A to Z. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, UK. 2004. P.29.
Educat ...
, a pioneer of "concrete" and "electroacoustic music" in Cuba.
Closely following the early post-revolution generation, a group of young composers started to attract the attention of the public that attended classical music concerts. Most of them had obtained degrees in reputable Schools outside the country thanks to scholarships granted by the government, like Sergio Fernández Barroso (also known as
Sergio Barroso
Sergio Fernández Barroso (also known as Sergio Barroso) (b. Havana, Cuba, 1946) is a Cuban composer, performer and professor.Orovio, Helio: Cuban music from A to Z. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, U.K., 2004, p. 81.
Academic Background
Sergio Barroso stud ...
), that received a post-graduate degree from the Superior Academy of Music in Prague, and
Roberto Valera, who studied with
Witold Rudziński
Witold Rudziński (14 March 1913, in Sebezh, Russian Empire – 29 February 2004) was a Polish composer, conductor, and author.
He studied composition at the Mieczysław Karlowicz Conservatory of Music in Vilnius, and later at the Gregorian In ...
and
Andrzej Dobrowolski
Andrzej Dobrowolski (September 9, 1921 – August 8, 1990) was a Polish composer and teacher. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatoire during the war and afterwards in the State High School of Music in Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the seco ...
in Poland. Three other composers belong to this group:
Calixto Alvarez,
Carlos Malcolm
Carlos Malcolm OD (born c. 1934) is a world renowned Jamaican trombonist, percussionist and bandleader who helped cultivate the infamous Jamaican genres of music known as Ska and Reggae.
Biography
Carlos Malcolm was born in Panama c. 1935Port ...
and
Héctor Angulo.
In 1962, the
North American
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...
composer
Federico Smith arrives in
Havana
Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. . He embraced the Cuban nation as his own country and became one of the most accomplished musicians living and working in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
at that time. He remained in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
until his death, and made an important contribution to the Cuban musical patrimony.
During the early 1970s, a group of musicians and composers, most of them graduated from the National School of Arts and the Havana Conservatory, gathered around an organization recently created by the government as the junior section of UNEAC (
National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba
The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, UNEAC) is a social, cultural and professional organization of writers, musicians, actors, painters, sculptors, and artist of different genres. It ...
), the "Brigada Hermanos Saíz. Some of its member were composers
Juan Piñera
Juan Piñera (born 1949 in Havana) is a Cuban musician who during his long career has covered a wide professional spectrum as performer, composer, professor and musical adviser.
Studies
Juan Piñera took his first piano lessons from his sister Ni ...
(nephew of the renowned Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera),
Flores Chaviano
Flores Chaviano (born 10 December 1946) is an accomplished Cuban composer, guitarist, professor and orchestral conductor that has achieved great international recognition.
Academic background
Flores Chaviano began his musical studies in his nati ...
, Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz,
Danilo Avilés,
Magaly Ruiz
Doris Magaly Ruiz Lastres (born 1941) is a Cuban musician and composer. Her compositions have been performed at a number of international music festivals.
Life
Magaly Ruiz was born in Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1941. In 1981, she graduated with a deg ...
,
Efraín Amador Piñero Efraín is a masculine Spanish given name, a cognate of Ephraim. Notable people with the name include:
* Efrain Chacurian (1924–2019), Argentine-born naturalised American soccer player
* Efraín Cortés (born 1984), Colombian football defender ...
and
José Loyola . Other contemporary composers less involved with the organization were
José María Vitier,
Julio Roloff,
and Jorge López Marín.
![Tania Leon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Tania_Leon.jpg)
After the
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
(1959), many future Cuban composers emigrated at a very young age and developed most of their careers outside the country. Within this group are the composers
Tania León
Tania León (born May 14, 1943) is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Early years and education
She was born Tania Justina Leó ...
,
Orlando Jacinto García Orlando Jacinto Garcia (born 1954; surname sometimes spelled García) is a Cuban-American composer of contemporary classical music.
Academic background
Garcia received a DMA degree in composition from the University of Miami in 1985. He also stud ...
, Armando Tranquilino,
Odaline de la Martinez
Odaline de la Martinez (born 31 October 1949) is a Cuban-American composer and conductor, currently residing in the UK. She is the artistic director of Lontano, a London-based contemporary music ensemble which she co-founded in 1976 with New Zeala ...
, José Raul Bernardo,
Jorge Martín (composer) and Raul Murciano.
21st-century classical and art music
During the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century a new generation of composers emerged into the Cuban classical music panorama. Most of them received a solid musical education provided by the official arts school system created by the Cuban government and graduated from the
Instituto Superior de Arte The University of Arts of Cuba / Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) was established on September 1, 1976, by the Cuban government as a school for the arts. Its original structure had three schools: Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts.
History
...
(ISA). Some of those composers are
Louis Franz Aguirre, Ileana Pérez Velázquez, Keila María Orozco,
Viviana Ruiz,
Fernando (Archi) Rodríguez Alpízar,
Yalil Guerra,
Eduardo Morales Caso
Eduardo Morales Caso (born March 10, 1969 in Havana), is a Cuban composer.
Biographical notes
Eduardo Morales Caso has consolidated a position as a prominent figure within the contemporary musical composition, with an international artistic traj ...
,
Ailem Carvajal Gómez, Irina Escalante Chernova and
Evelin Ramón. All of them have emigrated and currently live and have worked in other countries.
Electroacoustic music in Cuba
Juan Blanco
Juan Blanco (June 29, 1919 in Mariel, Cuba – November 5, 2008 in Havana) was the first Cuban composer to utilize electroacoustics, spatial music and multimedia.Orovio, Helio. Cuban music from A to Z. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, UK. 2004. P.29.
Educat ...
was the first Cuban composer to create an electroacoustic piece in 1961. This first composition, titled "Musica Para Danza", was produced with just an oscillator and three common tape recorders. As a result of the enormous scarcity generated by the trade embargo placed on Cuba by the United States, access to the necessary technological resources to produce electroacoustic music was always very limited for anyone interested. For this reason, it was not until 1969 that another Cuban composer,
Sergio Barroso
Sergio Fernández Barroso (also known as Sergio Barroso) (b. Havana, Cuba, 1946) is a Cuban composer, performer and professor.Orovio, Helio: Cuban music from A to Z. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, U.K., 2004, p. 81.
Academic Background
Sergio Barroso stud ...
, dedicated himself to the creation of electroacoustic musical compositions.
In 1970,
Juan Blanco
Juan Blanco (June 29, 1919 in Mariel, Cuba – November 5, 2008 in Havana) was the first Cuban composer to utilize electroacoustics, spatial music and multimedia.Orovio, Helio. Cuban music from A to Z. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, UK. 2004. P.29.
Educat ...
began to work as a music advisor for the Department of Propaganda of ICAP (Insituto Cubano de Amistad con Los Pueblos). In this capacity, he created electroacoustic music for all the audiovisual materials produced by ICAP. After nine years working without restitution, Blanco finally obtained financing to set up an Electroacoustic Studio to be used for his work. He was appointed as Director of the Studio, but under the condition that he should be the only one to use the facility.
After a few months, and without asking for permission, he opened the Electroacoustic Studio to all composers interested in working with electroacoustic technology, thus creating the ICAP Electroacoustsic Music Workshop (TIME), where he himself provided training to all participants. In 1990, the ICAP Workshop changed its name to Laboratorio Nacional de Música Electroacústica (LNME) and its main objective was to support and promote the work of Cuban electroacoustic composers and sound artists.
Some years later, another electroacoustic music studio was created at the
Instituto Superior de Arte The University of Arts of Cuba / Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) was established on September 1, 1976, by the Cuban government as a school for the arts. Its original structure had three schools: Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts.
History
...
(ISA). The Estudio de Música Electroacústica y por Computadoras (EMEC), currently named Estudio Carlos Fariñas de Arte Musical (Carlos Fariñas Studio of Musical Electroacoustic Art), is intended to provide electroacoustic music training to the composition students during the last years of their careers.
After 1970, Cuban composers such as
Leo Brouwer
Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida (born March 1, 1939) is a Cuban composer, conductor, and classical guitarist. He is a Member of Honour of the International Music Council.
Family
He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona y Casado. ...
, Jesús Ortega,
Carlos Fariñas
Carlos Fariñas (1934 in Cienfuegos – 2002 in La Habana) was a Cuban composer. He was one of the most important masters of the Cuban avant-garde in the 1960s along with Leo Brouwer and Juan Blanco.
He received his firsts musical orientation ...
and Sergio Vitier began also creating electroacoustic pieces; and in the 1980s a group of composers that included
Edesio Alejandro
Edesio Alejandro Rodríguez Salva (born March 28, 1958) is a Cuban composer of electronic music. He has composed music for theatre plays, TV, and movies; as well as several concert compositions. Many of them experimental, using synthesizers and mi ...
, Fernando (Archi) Rodríguez Alpízar, Marietta Véulens, Mirtha de la Torre,
Miguel Bonachea and
Julio Roloff, started receiving instruction and working at the ICAP Electroacoustic Studio. A list of Cuban composers that have utilized elecotroacoustics technology include
Argeliers León
Argeliers León Pérez (7 May 1918 – 23 February 1991) was a Cuban composer and musicologist.
Academic Background
He studied music at the Municipal Conservatory of Havana, Pedagogy at the University of Havana and completed specialized stud ...
,
Juan Piñera
Juan Piñera (born 1949 in Havana) is a Cuban musician who during his long career has covered a wide professional spectrum as performer, composer, professor and musical adviser.
Studies
Juan Piñera took his first piano lessons from his sister Ni ...
,
Roberto Valera,
José Loyola, Ileana Pérez Velázquez and José Angel Pérez Puentes.
Most Cuban composers that established their residence outside Cuba have worked with electroacoustic technology. These include composers Aurelio de la Vega, Armando Tranquilino,
Tania León
Tania León (born May 14, 1943) is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Early years and education
She was born Tania Justina Leó ...
,
Orlando Jacinto García Orlando Jacinto Garcia (born 1954; surname sometimes spelled García) is a Cuban-American composer of contemporary classical music.
Academic background
Garcia received a DMA degree in composition from the University of Miami in 1985. He also stud ...
, Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz,
Ailem Carvajal Gómez and Irina Escalante Chernova.
Classical guitar in Cuba
From the 16th to the 19th century
The guitar (as it is known today or in one of its historical versions) has been present in Cuba since the discovery of the island by Spain. As early as the 16th century, a musician named Juan Ortiz, from the village of Trinidad, is mentioned by famous chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo as "gran tañedor de vihuela y viola" ("a great performer of the
vihuela
The vihuela () is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar (figure-of-eight form offering strength and portability) but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of t ...
and the guitar"). Another "vihuelista", Alonso Morón from Bayamo, is also mentioned in the Spanish conquest chronicles during the 16th century.
A disciple of famous Spanish guitarist Dionisio Aguado, José Prudencio Mungol was the first Cuban guitarist trained in the Spanish guitar tradition. In 1893 he performed at a much acclaimed concert in Havana, after returning from Spain. Mungol actively participated in the musical life of Havana and was a professor at the Hubert de Blanck conservatory.
20th century and beyond
Severino López was born in Matanzas. He studied guitar in Cuba with Juan Martín Sabio and Pascual Roch, and in Spain with renowned Catalan guitarist Miguel Llobet. Severino López is considered the initiator in Cuba of the guitar school founded by Francisco Tárrega in Spain.
Clara Romero (1888-1951), founder of the modern Cuban School of Guitar, studied in Spain with Nicolás Prats and in Cuba with Félix Guerrero. She inaugurated the guitar department at the Havana Municipal Conservatory in 1931, where she also introduced the teachings of the Cuban folk guitar style. She created the Guitar Society of Cuba (Sociedad Guitarrística de Cuba) in 1940, and also the "Guitar" (Guitarra) magazine, with the purpose of promoting the Society's activities. She was the professor of many Cuban guitarists including her son
Isaac Nicola
Isaac Nicola Romero (11 April 1916 in Havana, Cuba – 14 July 1997) was a prominent Cuban guitarist and one of the founders of the modern Cuban Guitar School. He was also brother of Clara (Cuqui) Nicola.
Academic formation
Isaac Nicola bega ...
and her daughter
Clara (Cuqui) Nicola
Clara (Cuqui) Nicola (22 March 1926 – 14 July 2017) was a prominent Cuban guitarist and professor.Periódico Cubarte. Noticias. Homenaje a Cuqui Nicola.http://www.cubarte.cult.cu/periodico/noticias/61297/61297.html
Academic background
Clara (Cu ...
.
After studying with his mother, Clara Romero, at the Havana Municipal Conservatory,
Isaac Nicola
Isaac Nicola Romero (11 April 1916 in Havana, Cuba – 14 July 1997) was a prominent Cuban guitarist and one of the founders of the modern Cuban Guitar School. He was also brother of Clara (Cuqui) Nicola.
Academic formation
Isaac Nicola bega ...
(1916 – 1997) continued his training in Paris with Emilio Pujol, a disciple of Francisco Tárrega. He also studied the vihuela with Pujol and researched about the guitar's history and literature.
Modern Cuban Guitar School
![Leob](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Leob.jpg)
After the Cuban revolution in 1959,
Isaac Nicola
Isaac Nicola Romero (11 April 1916 in Havana, Cuba – 14 July 1997) was a prominent Cuban guitarist and one of the founders of the modern Cuban Guitar School. He was also brother of Clara (Cuqui) Nicola.
Academic formation
Isaac Nicola bega ...
and other professors such as
Marta Cuervo
Marta Cuervo (b. Havana, Cuba) was a Cuban guitarist and professor.
Academic formation
Marta Cuervo studied guitar and musical theory at the Havana Municipal Conservatory. She was a disciple of renowned guitarist Isaac Nicola.Giro, Radamés. Leo ...
,
Clara (Cuqui) Nicola
Clara (Cuqui) Nicola (22 March 1926 – 14 July 2017) was a prominent Cuban guitarist and professor.Periódico Cubarte. Noticias. Homenaje a Cuqui Nicola.http://www.cubarte.cult.cu/periodico/noticias/61297/61297.html
Academic background
Clara (Cu ...
, Marianela Bonet and Leopoldina Núñez were integrated to the national music schools system, where a unified didactical method was implemented. This was a nucleus for the later development of a national Cuban Guitar School with which a new generation of guitarists and composers collaborated.
Maybe the most important contribution to the modern Cuban guitar technique and repertoire comes from
Leo Brouwer
Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida (born March 1, 1939) is a Cuban composer, conductor, and classical guitarist. He is a Member of Honour of the International Music Council.
Family
He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona y Casado. ...
(born 1939). The grandson of Ernestina Lecuona, sister of Ernesto Lecuona, Brouwer began studying the guitar with his father and after some time continued with
Isaac Nicola
Isaac Nicola Romero (11 April 1916 in Havana, Cuba – 14 July 1997) was a prominent Cuban guitarist and one of the founders of the modern Cuban Guitar School. He was also brother of Clara (Cuqui) Nicola.
Academic formation
Isaac Nicola bega ...
. He taught himself harmony, counterpoint, musical forms and orchestration before completing his studies at the
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...
and the
University of Hartford
The University of Hartford (UHart) is a private university in West Hartford, Connecticut. Its main campus extends into neighboring Hartford and Bloomfield. The university attracts students from 48 states and 43 countries. The university and it ...
.
New generations
Since the 1960s, several generations of guitar performers, professors and composers have been formed under the Cuban Guitar School at educational institutions such as the Havana Municipal Conservatory, the National School of Arts, and the Instituto Superior de Arte. Others, such as
Manuel Barrueco
Manuel Barrueco (born December 16, 1952) is a Cuban classical guitarist. During three decades of concert performances he has performed and recorded across the United States and has been involved in many successful collaborations. In addition, he ...
, a concertist of international renown, developed their careers outside the country. Among many other guitarists related to the Cuban Guitar School are
Carlos Molina, Sergio Vitier,
Flores Chaviano
Flores Chaviano (born 10 December 1946) is an accomplished Cuban composer, guitarist, professor and orchestral conductor that has achieved great international recognition.
Academic background
Flores Chaviano began his musical studies in his nati ...
,
Efraín Amador Piñero Efraín is a masculine Spanish given name, a cognate of Ephraim. Notable people with the name include:
* Efrain Chacurian (1924–2019), Argentine-born naturalised American soccer player
* Efraín Cortés (born 1984), Colombian football defender ...
, Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz,
Martín Pedreira, Lester Carrodeguas, Mario Daly, José Angel Pérez Puentes and Teresa Madiedo. A younger group includes guitarists Rey Guerra, Aldo Rodríguez Delgado, Pedro Cañas, Leyda Lombard,
Ernesto Tamayo
Ernesto Tamayo (18 September 1971 – 17 October 2014) was a Cuban classical guitarist who toured extensively throughout North and South America and Europe.
Biography
Born in Havana, Cuba, Tamayo began studying the guitar with his father when ...
,
Miguel Bonachea,
Joaquín Clerch
Joaquín Clerch (born 1965 in Havana, Cuba) is a classical guitarist and composer. He was a close friend and protégé of Cuban guitarist and composer Leo Brouwer. Clerch's composition ''Yemaya'' won first prize in both the 1987 National Cuban Co ...
and
Yalil Guerra.
Classical piano in Cuba
![LecuonaE](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/LecuonaE.jpg)
After its arrival in Cuba at the end of the 18th century, the pianoforte (commonly called piano) rapidly became one of the favorite instruments among the Cuban population. Along with the humble guitar, the piano accompanied the popular Cuban "guarachas" and "contradanzas" (derived from the European Country Dances) at salons and ballrooms in Havana and all over the country. As early as in 1804, a concert program in Havana announced a vocal concert "accompanied at the fortepiano by a distinguished foreigner recently arrived" and in 1832, Juan Federico Edelmann (1795-1848), a renowned pianist, son of a famous Alsatian composer and pianist, arrived in Havana and gave a very successful concert at the Teatro Principal. Encouraged by the warm welcome, Edelmann decided to stay in Havana, and he was very soon promoted to an important position within the Santa Cecilia Philharmonic Society. In 1836, he opened a music store and publishing company.
One of the most prestigious Cuban musicians,
Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (; August 7, 1896 – November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires. His over 600 compositions include songs and zarzuelas as ...
(1895-1963), began studying piano with his sister Ernestina and continued with
Peyrellade, Saavedra, Nin and Hubert de Blanck. A child prodigy, Lecuona gave a concert, at just five, at the Círculo Hispano. When he graduated from the National Conservatory, he was awarded the First Prize and the Gold Medal of his class by unanimous decision of the board. He is by far the Cuban composer of greatest international recognition and his contributions to the Cuban piano tradition are considered exceptional.
[
]
Classical violin in Cuba
From the 16th to the 18th century
Bowed stringed instruments have been present in Cuba since the 16th century. Musician Juan Ortiz from the Ville of Trinidad is mentioned by chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo as a "great performer of "vihuela" and "viol
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...
a". On In 1764, Esteban Salas y Castro, became the new chapel master of the Santiago de Cuba Cathedral, and to fulfill his musical duties he counted with a small vocal-instrumental group that included two violins. In 1793, numerous colonists fleeing from the slave revolt in Saint Domingue arrived in Santiago de Cuba, and an orchestra consisting of a flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, three horns, three violins, viola, two violoncellos, and percussion was founded.
From the 18th to the 19th century
During the transition from the 18th to the 19th centuries, the Havanese Ulpiano Estrada (1777–1847) offered violin lessons and conducted the Teatro Principal orchestra from 1817 to 1820. Apart from his activity as a violinist, Estrada kept a very active musical career as a conductor of numerous orchestras, bands and operas, and composing many contradanzas and other dance pieces, such as minuets and valses.
José Vandergutch, Belgian violinist, arrived at Havana along with his father Juan and brother Francisco, also violinists. They returned at a later time to Belgium, but José established his permanent residence in Havana, where he acquired great recognition. Vandergutch offered numerous concerts as a soloist and accompanied by several orchestras, around the mid-19th century. He was a member of the Classical Music Association and also a Director of The "Asociación Musical de Socorro Mutuo de La Habana."
Within the universe of the classical Cuban violin during the 19th century, there are two outstanding Masters that may be considered among the greatest violin virtuosos of all time; they are José White Lafitte y Claudio Brindis de Salas Garrido
Claudio José Domingo Brindis de Salas Garrido (4 August 1852 – 1 June 1911) was a Cuban concert violinist. His father was the violinist and bandleader, Claudio Brindis de Salas. The son surpassed his father, and was a violinist of world ...
.
After receiving his first musical instruction from his father, the virtuoso Cuban violinist José White Lafitte (1835–1918) offered his first concert in Matanzas on March 21, 1854. In that presentation he was accompanied by the famous American pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (May 8, 1829 – December 18, 1869) was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent most of his working career outside the United States.
Life and car ...
, whom encouraged him to further his musical instruction in Paris, and also collected funds for that purpose.
José White studied musical composition in the Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
from 1855 to 1871. Just ten months after his arrival he won the first prize in the violin category on the Conservatorie's contest and was highly praised by Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards f ...
. At a later time he was a professor of the renowned violinists George Enescu
George Enescu (; – 4 May 1955), known in France as Georges Enesco, was a Romanian composer, violinist, conductor and teacher. Regarded as one of the greatest musicians in Romanian history, Enescu is featured on the Romanian five lei.
Biog ...
and Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud (; 27 September 18801 September 1953) was a French violinist.
Biography
Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the ...
.
From 1877 to 1889, White was appointed as Director of the Imperial Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, where he also served as court musician of the Emperor Pedro II. At a later time he returned to Paris where he stayed until his death. The famous violin named "Swan's song" was his preferred instrument and his most famous composition is the Habanera "La bella cubana". White also composed many other pieces, including a concert for violin and orchestra.
Claudio José Domingo Brindis de Salas y Garrido (1852–1911) was a renowned Cuban violinist, son of the also famous violinist, double-bassist and conductor Claudio Brindis de Salas (1800-1972), which conducted one of the most popular orchestras of Havana during the first half of the 19th century, named "La Concha de Oro" (The Golden Conch). Claudio José surpassed the fame and expertise of his father and came to acquire international recognition.
Claudio Brindis de Salas Garrido
Claudio José Domingo Brindis de Salas Garrido (4 August 1852 – 1 June 1911) was a Cuban concert violinist. His father was the violinist and bandleader, Claudio Brindis de Salas. The son surpassed his father, and was a violinist of world ...
began his musical studies with his father and continued with Maestros José Redondo and the Belgian José Vandergutch. He offered his first concert in Havana in 1863, in which Vandegutch participated as accompanist. The famous pianist and composer Ignacio Cervantes also participated in that event.
According with the contemporary critique, Brindis de Salas was considered one of the most outstanding violinists of his time at an international level. Alejo Carpentier referred to him as: "The most outstanding black violinist from the 19th century... something without any precedent in the musical history of the continent".
The French government named him member of the Légion d'Honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
, and gave him a nobility title of "Baron". In Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
he received a genuine Stradivarius
A Stradivarius is one of the violins, violas, cellos and other string instruments built by members of the Italian family Stradivari, particularly Antonio Stradivari (Latin: Antonius Stradivarius), during the 17th and 18th centuries. They are co ...
, and while living in Berlin he married a German lady, was named Chamber Musician of the Emperor and received an honorary citizenship from that country. Brindis de Salas died poor and forgotten in 1911 from tuberculosis, in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
. In 1930 his remains were transferred to Havana with great honors.
Another outstanding Cuban violinist from the 19th century was Rafael Díaz Albertini (1857–1928). He studied violin with José Vandergutch and Anselmo López (1841-1858), well known Havanese violinist that was dedicated also to music publishing. In 1870, Albertini travelled to Paris with the purpose of perfecting his technique with famous violinist Jean-Delphin Alard, and in 1875 received First prize in the Paris Contest, in which he subsequently participated as a Juror. He toured extensively through the world, accompanied some times by prestigious Masters such as Hugo Wolf and Camille Saint-Saëns. In 1894 he made presentations, along with Ignacion Cervantes, through the most important cities of Cuba.
A list of prominent Cuban violinist from the second half of the 19th century and the first of the 20th may include: Manuel Muñoz Cedeño (b. 1813), José Domingo Bousquet (b. 1823), Carlos Anckermann (b. 1829), Antonio Figueroa (b. 1852), Ramón Figueroa (b. 1862), Juan Torroella (b.1874), Casimiro Zertucha (b. 1880), Joaquín Molina (b. 1884), Marta de La Torre (1888), Catalino Arjona (b. 1895) and Diego Bonilla (1898-).
From the 20th to the 21st century
During the first half of the 20th century the name of Amadeo Roldán
Amadeo Roldán y Gardes (Paris, 12 June 1900 – Havana, 7 March 1939) was a Cuban composer and violinist. Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father. It was his mother, the pianist Albertina Gardes, who initiated her ch ...
stands out (1900–1939), because apart from an excellent violinist, professor and conductor, Roldán is considered one of the most important Cuban composers of all time.
After his graduation at the Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
in 1935 with just 16 years old, the renowned Cuban violinist Ángel Reyes (1919–1988) developed a very successful career as a soloist and also accompanied by prestigious orchestras of many countries. He established his residence in the United States at a very young age, obtained an award in the Ysaÿe Contest in Brussels and was a professor at the Michigan and Northwestern Universities, until his retirement in 1985.
Eduardo Hernández Asiaín (1911-2010) was born in Havana, began his musical studies at a very early age and offered his first concert with just seven years old. When he was 14, he obtained the First Award at the Municipal Conservatory of Havana and was appointed as Concertino of the Havana Symphony Orchestra. In 1932, he travelled to Madrid to further his musical education with professors Enrique Fernández Arbós and Antonio Fernández Bordas. Since 1954, Hernández Asiaín performed as a soloist with the orchestras from the Pasdeloup Concert Society and the Radiodiffusion française in Paris, the "Orquesta Nacional de España", the "Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao", the "Orquesta de Cámara de Madrid" and the "Orquesta Sinfónica y de Cámara de San Sebastián", of which he is the founder. In 1968, he was appointed as First Violin of the "Cuarteto Clásico" of RTVE
The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, S.A. (; ), known as Radiotelevisión Española or RTVE, is the state-owned public corporation that assumed in 2007 the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service know ...
, participating with pianist Isabel Picaza González in the "Quinteto Clásico de RNE", with which he offered concerts and made numerous recordings in Spain and other countries. He also toured extensively through the US.
Other prominent Cuban violinists from the first half of the 20th century are: Robero Valdés Arnau (1919-1974), Alberto Bolet and Virgilio Diago.
After 1959, already in the post revolutionary period, stands out a Cuban violinist that has made a substantial contribution, not just to the development of the violin and the bowed string instruments, but also to the national musical culture in general.
Evelio Tieles began to study music in Cuba with his father, Evelio Tieles Soler, when he was just seven years old, and continued at a later time with professor Joaquín Molina. Between 1952 and 1954, Tieles studied violin in Paris, France, with Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud (; 27 September 18801 September 1953) was a French violinist.
Biography
Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the ...
and René Benedetti. In 1955 he returned to Paris and studied at the National Superior Music Conservatory in that city, and in 1958, he continued his musical training at Conservatorio Tchaikovsky in Moscú, where he was a disciple of renowned violinists David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (; – 24 October 1974), was a Soviet classical violinist, violist and conductor.
Oistrakh collaborated with major orchestras and musicians from many parts of the world and was the dedicatee of numerous violin w ...
and Igor Oistrakh
Igor Davidovich Oistrakh (russian: И́горь Дави́дович О́йстрах; uk, Ігор Давидович Ойстрах 27 April 1931 – 14 August 2021) was a Soviet and Russian violinist. He was described by ''Encyclopædia Brita ...
. Tieles graduated in 1963 and by recommendation of the Conservatory he pursued his master's degree from 1963 to 1966, with the same mentioned professors.[ Tieles received also professional training from the prestigious violinists ]Henryk Szeryng
Henryk Szeryng (usually pronounced ''HEN-r-ik SHEH-r-in-g'') (22 September 19183 March 1988) was a Polish violinist.
Early years
He was born in Warsaw, Poland on 22 September 1918 into a wealthy Jewish family. The surname "Szeryng" is a Polish ...
and Eduardo Hernández Asiaín.
Evelio Tieles has offered numerous presentations as a concert performer, in a duo with his brother, pianist Cecilio Tieles, or accompanied by the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra and other symphonic and chamber ensembles. He has performed along with prestigious conductors such as Thomas Sanderling
Thomas Sanderling (; born October 2, 1942) is a German conductor. His father was the conductor Kurt Sanderling. His half-brothers are the conductors Stefan Sanderling and Michael Sanderling.
Sanderling was born in Novosibirsk, and began his e ...
, Boris Brott
Boris Brott, (March 14, 1944 – April 5, 2022) was a Canadian conductor and motivational speaker. He was one of the most internationally recognized Canadian conductors, having conducted on stages around the world, including Carnegie Hall and ...
, Enrique González Mántici y Manuel Duchesne Cuzán, among others.
Tieles has established his residence in Spain since 1984, and he teaches violin in the Vila-Seca Conservatory, in the province of Tarragona, where he has been appointed as "Professor Emeritus". He has also served at the Superior Conservatory of the Barcelona Lyceum as Chief of the Chamber Music Department (1991–1998), Head of the Division of Bowed String Instruments (1986-2002) and Academic Director (2000–2002).[
Apart from his outstanding career as a concert performer and professor, during the Post-Revolutionary period, Tieles promoted and organized in Cuba the bowed string instruments training, fundamentally for the violin.][
Another prominent violinist is professor Alla Tarán (1941). She was formed as a violinist in her native Ukraine and worked as a professor of Chamber Ensemble Practice. Tarán established her residence in Cuba since 1969.
Alfredo Muñoz (1949) began studying the violin at Conservatorio Orbon in Havana, Cuba, and subsequently continued at the National School of Arts and the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). He joined the National Symphony Orchestra as a violinist in 1972 and since then has been very active as a soloist and a member of the White Trio, in Cuba and abroad. He is currently a professor at the Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA).
Other Cuban violinists that have developed their careers between the 20th and the 21st century are: Armando Toledo (1950), Julián Corrales (1954), Miguel del Castillo and Ricardo Jústiz.]
21st century
Already at the beginning of the 21st century the violinists Ilmar López-Gavilán, Mirelys Morgan Verdecia, Ivonne Rubio Padrón, Patricia Quintero and Rafael Machado
Rafael Machado is a Cuban violinist.
Academic background
Rafael Machado began to study violin and musical theory in Havana, Cuba, in 1972; and received his Masters in Music from the Instituto Superior de Arte of Havana, in 1987. During this peri ...
are worthy of note.
Opera in Cuba
Opera has been present in Cuba since the latest part of the 18th century, when the first full-fledged theater, called Coliseo, was built. Since then to present times, the Cuban people have highly enjoyed opera, and many Cuban composers have cultivated the operatic genre, sometimes with great success at an international level. The best Cuban lyrical singer in the 20th century was the operatic tenor
A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...
Francisco Fernandez Dominicis (Italian name: Francesco Dominici) (1885-1968). The best Cuban female lyrical singer in the 20th century was the mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (; ; meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middle C ...
Marta Perez (1924-2009). She sang at La Scala
La Scala (, , ; abbreviation in Italian of the official name ) is a famous opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the ' (New Royal-Ducal Theatre alla Scala). The premiere performan ...
in Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, Italy in 1955.
The 19th century
The first documented operatic event in Havana
Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. took place in 1776. That presentation was mentioned in a note published in the newspaper ''Diario de La Habana'' on December 19, 1815: "Today, Wednesday 19th of the current, if the weather allows, the new tragic opera of merit in three acts that contains 17 pieces of music, titled ''Dido Abandoned'' will be performed ... This is one of the premiere dramas from the French theater. In Italy, the one composed by renowned Metastasio deserved a singular applause, and was sung in this city on October 12, 1776."[González, Jorge Antonio: La composición operística en Cuba. Editorial Letras Cubanas, La Habana, Cuba, 1986.]
Cristóbal Martínez Corrés was the first Cuban opera composer, but his Works, such as ''El diablo contrabandista'' and ''Don papanero'' were never premiered and have not been preserved until the present time. Born in Havana, in 1822, composer and pianist Martínez Corrés established his residence together with his family in France when he was just nine years old; and at a later tame they went to Italy. Due to his premature death, a third opera named ''Safo'', never surpassed an early creative stage. Martínez Corrés died in Genoa, in 1842.[Orovio, Helio: ''Cuban music from A to Z''. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, U.K., 2004, p. 134.]
Gaspar Villate y Montes was born in Havana, in 1851 and since an early age he showed a great musical talent. As a child, he began to study piano with Nicolás Ruiz Espadero Nicolás Ruiz Espadero (February 15, 1832 – August 30, 1890) was a Cuban pianist, composer, piano teacher and editor of the posthumous works of American composer-pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Espadero was born and died in Havana. In his tim ...
and in 1867, when he was just 16 years old, he composed his first opera on a drama by Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
, titled ''Angelo, tirano de Padua''. A year later, at the beginning of the 1868 war, he travelled to the United States with his family and upon his return to Havana in 1871 he wrote another opera called ''Las primeras armas de Richelieu''.
Villate travelled to France with the purpose to continue his music studies in the Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
Conservatory, where he received classes from François Bazin, Victorien de Joncieres and Adolphe Danhauser
Adolphe-Léopold Danhauser (26 February 1835 – 9 June 1896) was a French musician, educator, music theorist and composer.
Life and career
Adolphe Danhauser was born in Paris and studied at the Paris Conservatoire with François Bazin (composer ...
. He composed numerous instrumental pieces such as ''contradanzas'', ''habaneras'', ''romances'' and ''waltzes'', and in 1877 he premiered with great audience acclaim his opera ''Zilia'' in Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, which was presented in Havana in 1881. Since then, Villate focused his efforts mainly in opera and composed pieces such as ''La Zarina'' and ''Baltazar'', premiered at La Haya and Teatro Real de Madrid respectively. It is known that he worked on an opera with a Cuban theme called ''Cristóbal Colón'', but its manuscript has been lost.
Villate died in Paris in 1891, soon after starting to compose a lyrical drama called ''Lucifer'', from which some fragments have been preserved.[Carpentier, Alejo: La música en Cuba, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1979, pp. 207–210.]
From 1901 to 1959
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes (3 April 1874, in Havana – 7 September 1944) was a Cuban composer, and an author of books on the history of Cuban folk music.
The outstanding habanera ''Tú'', written when he was sixteen, was his best-known com ...
was born in Havana, in 1874, within an artistic family; his father was a writer and his mother a pianist and singer. He began his musical studies at Conservatorio Hubert de Blanck and at a later time took classes from Carlos Anckermann. He received also a Law Degree in 1894. When Sánchez de Fuentes was just 18 years old, he composed the famous ''Habanera "Tú"'', which became an extraordinary international success. Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (, ; December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French an ...
said it was: "the most famous Habanera".
On October 26, 1898, Sánchez de Fuentes premiered at the Albisu Theater in Havana his first opera called ''Yumuri'', based on the Island's colonization theme. In it, an aborigine princess falls in love with a handsome Spanish conqueror, which abducts her at the wedding ceremony with another indigenous character. At the end, while escaping, both suffer a tragic death during an earthquake. Sánchez de Fuentes would go on to compose another five operas: ''El Náufrago'' (1901), ''Dolorosa'' (1910), ''Doreya'' (1918), ''El Caminante'' (1921) and ''Kabelia'' (1942).
From 1960 to present time
One of the most active and outstanding composers of his generation, Sergio Fernández Barroso (also known as Sergio Barroso
Sergio Fernández Barroso (also known as Sergio Barroso) (b. Havana, Cuba, 1946) is a Cuban composer, performer and professor.Orovio, Helio: Cuban music from A to Z. Tumi Music Ltd. Bath, U.K., 2004, p. 81.
Academic Background
Sergio Barroso stud ...
) (1946), is the author of an opera called ''La forma del camino'', which also possesses the complementary title of ''s-XIV-69'' (which means ''Siglo XIV – 1969''). With an approximate duration of 60 minutes, this piece utilizes as a script a story from the ''Popol Vuh'' (the sacred text of the Maya culture) about the mythic brothers Hunahpu and Ixbalanqué. The score includes soloists and a choir of nine mixed voices, accompanied by an instrumental group and an electro-acoustic quadraphonic system. The scene requires a stage elevated over the choir spatial position, which members wear dinner jackets, in opposition to the more casual attire of the soloists. All singers wear Indian masks.
Most recently the work of two young Cuban composers stand out, Jorge Martín (composer) and Louis Franz Aguirre.
Jorge Martín
Jorge Martín Almoguera (born 29 January 1998), nicknamed the Martinator, is a Spanish Grand Prix motorcycle racer riding for Pramac Racing. In 2021 Martín moved up to the premier class with Pramac Racing, and won the 2021 Styrian motorcycle G ...
(1959) was born in Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
and established his residence in the US at a very young age. He studied musical composition at the Yale and Columbia Universities. He has composed three lyric pieces: ''Beast and Superbeast'', a series of four operas in one act each, based on short stories by Saki; ''Tobermory'', opera in one act that obtained first prize in the Fifth Biennial of the National Opera Association (USA), and has been presented in several cities of the United States; and ''Before Night Falls
''Before Night Falls'' ( es, Antes que anochezca: autobiografía) is the 1992 autobiography of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, describing his early life in Cuba, his time in prison, and his escape to the United States in the Mariel Boatlift of 1 ...
'', an opera based on the famous autobiography of the Cuban novelist, playwright and poet Reinaldo Arenas
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright known as a vocal critic of Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban government. His memoir of the Cuban dissident movement and of being a ...
, renowned dissident from the Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
government.
Louis Franz Aguirre (1968) is currently one of the most prolific and renowned Cuban composers at an international level. His catalog includes four operatic works: ''Ebbó'' (1998), premiered on January 17, 1999, at the Brotfabrik Theater in Bonn, Germany; ''Ogguanilebbe'' (Liturgy of the divine word) (2005), premiered in the Salla dil Parlamento d'il Castello di Udine, Italy. ''Yo el Supremo'' (Comic play with Dictator in one Act), premiered on October 27, 2015, in the Teatro Galileo, Madrid, Spain and ''The way the dead love'' (Theogony: an operatic manifest), commissioned by the Lydenskab Ensemble and financed by KODA, Denmark. Premiered on February 24, 2017, in Godsbanen, Aarhus, Denmark, as part of the ''Århus European Capital of Culture 2017''.
Musicology in Cuba
Throughout the years, the Cuban nation has developed a wealth of musicological material created by numerous investigators and experts on this subject. The work of some authors who provided information about the music in Cuba during the 19th century was usually included in chronicles covering a more general subject. The first investigations and studies specifically dedicated to the musical art and practice did not appear in Cuba until the beginning of the 20th century.[http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/library/i18088_3.pdf ]
A list of important personalities that have contributed to musicological studies in Cuba includes Fernando Ortiz, Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes
Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes (3 April 1874, in Havana – 7 September 1944) was a Cuban composer, and an author of books on the history of Cuban folk music.
The outstanding habanera ''Tú'', written when he was sixteen, was his best-known com ...
, Emilio Grenet, Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (, ; December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French an ...
, Argeliers León
Argeliers León Pérez (7 May 1918 – 23 February 1991) was a Cuban composer and musicologist.
Academic Background
He studied music at the Municipal Conservatory of Havana, Pedagogy at the University of Havana and completed specialized stud ...
, Maria Teresa Linares, Pablo Hernández Balaguer, Alberto Muguercia and Zoila Lapique.
A second generation of musicologists formed after de Cuban revolution of 1959 include: Zoila Gómez, Victoria Elí, Alberto Alén Pérez
Alberto Alén Pérez (1948 in Havana – 14 October 2004) was a Cuban musicologist and cellist.
Early life and education
Alén studied violoncello with Professor Fabio Landa at Alejandro García Caturla Conservatory in Marianao, Havana, and ...
, Rolando Antonio Pérez Fernández
Rolando Antonio Pérez Fernández (born 1947, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba) is a Cuban musicologist, cellist and professor.
Academic background
Rolando Pérez initiated his musical studies in Santiago de Cuba, where he also began his career as cellist ...
and Leonardo Acosta.
Most recently, a group of young Cuban musicologists have earned a well deserved reputation within the international academic field, due to their solid investigative work. Some of the most prominent members of this group are: Miriam Escudero Suástegui, Liliana González Moreno, Iván César Morales Flores and Pablo Alejandro Suárez Marrero.
Popular music
Hispanic heritage
It is obvious that the first popular music played in Cuba after the Spanish conquest was brought by the Spanish conquerors themselves, and was most likely borrowed from the Spanish popular music in vogue during the 16th century. From the 16th to the 18th century some danceable songs that emerged in Spain were associated with Hispanic America, or considered to have originated in America. Some of these songs with picturesque names such as Sarabande, Chaconne, Zambapalo, Retambico and Gurumbé, among others, shared a common trait, its characteristic rhythm called Hemiola
In music, hemiola (also hemiolia) is the ratio 3:2. The equivalent Latin term is sesquialtera. In rhythm, ''hemiola'' refers to three beats of equal value in the time normally occupied by two beats. In pitch, ''hemiola'' refers to the interval of ...
or Sesquiáltera (in Spain).
This rhythm has been described as the alternation or superposition of a duple meter and a triple meter (6/8 + 3/4), and its utilization was widespread in the Spanish territory since at least the 13th century, where it appears in one of the Cantigas de Santa María (Como poden per sas culpas).
Hemiola
In music, hemiola (also hemiolia) is the ratio 3:2. The equivalent Latin term is sesquialtera. In rhythm, ''hemiola'' refers to three beats of equal value in the time normally occupied by two beats. In pitch, ''hemiola'' refers to the interval of ...
or Sesquiáltera is also a typical rhythm within the African musical traditions, both from the North of the Continent as from the South. Therefore, it is quite probable that the original song-dances brought by the Spanish to America already included elements from the African culture with which the enslaved Africans that arrived to the Island were familiar; and they further utilized them in order to create new creole genres.
The well known Son de la Ma Teodora, an ancient Cuban song, as well as the first Cuban autochthonous genres, Punto and Zapateo, show the Sesquiáltera rhythm on their accompaniment, which greatly associate those genres to the Spanish song-dances from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
Música campesina (peasant music)
It seems that Punto and Zapateo Cubano were the first autochthonous musical genres of the Cuban nation. Although the first printed sample of a Cuban Creole Zapateo (Zapateo Criollo) was not published until 1855 in the "Álbum Regio of Vicente Díaz de Comas", it is possible to find references about the existence of those genres since long time before. Its structural characteristics have survived almost unaltered through a period of more than two hundred years and they are usually considered the most typically Hispanic Cuban popular music genres.
Cuban musicologists María Teresa Linares, Argeliers León and Rolando Antonio Pérez coincide in thinking that Punto and Zapateo are based on Spanish dance –songs (such as chacone and sarabande) that arrived first at the most important population centers such as Havana and Santiago de Cuba and then spread throughout the surrounding rural areas where they were adopted and modified by the peasant (campesino) population at a later time.
Punto guajiro
Punto guajiro or Punto Cubano
Punto guajiro or ''punto cubano'' – or simply ''punto'' – is a sung genre of Cuban music, a poetic art with music. It became popular in the western and central regions of Cuba in the 17th century, and consolidated as a genre in the 18th ...
, or simply Punto is a sung genre of Cuban music, an improvised poetic-music art that emerged in the western and central regions of Cuba during the 19th century. Although Punto appears to come from an Andalusian origin, it is a true Cuban genre because of its creole modifications.
Punto is played by a group with various types of plucked string instruments: the tiple (a treble guitar currently in disuse), the Spanish guitar, the Cuban tres, and the laúd. The word punto refers to the use of a plucked technique (punteado), rather than strumming (rasgueado). Also some percussion instruments have been utilized such as the clave, the güiro and the guayo ( a metallic scraper). Singers gather themselves in contending teams, and improvise their lines.
They sing fixed melodies called "tonadas" which are based on a meter of ten strophe verses called "décimas", with intervals between stanzas to give the singers some time to prepare the next verse. Early compositions were sometimes recorded and published, as were the names of some of the singers and composers. Beginning around 1935, Punto reached a peak of popularity on Cuban radio.
Punto was one of the first Cuban genres recorded by American companies at the beginning of the 20th century, but at a later time the interest decayed and little effort was made to continue recording the live radio performances. A fan of this genre, stenographer Aida Bode, wrote down many verses as they were broadcast and finally, in 1997, her transcriptions were published in book form.
Celina González and Albita Rodríguez both sang Punto at the beginning of their careers, proving that the genre is still alive. Celina had one of the greatest voices in popular music, and her supporting group Campo Alegre was outstanding. For aficionados, however, Indio Naborí (Sabio Jesús Orta Ruiz, b. 30 September 1922) is the greatest name in Punto for his "decima" poetry, which he wrote daily for the radio and newspapers. He is also a published author with several collections of his poetry, much of which has a political nueva trova edge.
Zapateo
Zapateo is a typical dance of the Cuban "campesino" or "guajiro," of Spanish origin. It is a dance of pairs, involving tapping of the feet, mostly performed by the male partner. Illustrations exist from previous centuries and today it survives cultivated by Folk Music Groups as a fossil genre. It was accompanied by tiple
A tiple (, literally treble or soprano), is a plucked typically 12-string chordophone of the guitar family. A tiple player is called a ''tiplista''. The first mention of the tiple comes from musicologist Pablo Minguet e Irol in 1752. Although ma ...
, guitar and güiro
The güiro () is a Puerto Rican percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines (see photo) along the notches to produce a ratchet sound.
The güiro ...
, in combined 6/8 and 3/4 rhythm (hemiola), accented on the first of every three quaver
180px, Figure 1. An eighth note with stem extending up, an eighth note with stem extending down, and an eighth rest.
180px, Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together.
An eighth note (American) or a quaver (British) is a musical note play ...
s.
Guajira
A genre of Cuban song similar to the Punto cubano
Punto guajiro or ''punto cubano'' – or simply ''punto'' – is a sung genre of Cuban music, a poetic art with music. It became popular in the western and central regions of Cuba in the 17th century, and consolidated as a genre in the 18th ...
and the Criolla.[Orovio, Helio 2004. ''Cuban music from A to Z''. p101] It contains bucolic countryside lyrics, similar to décima
A décima is a ten-line stanza of poetry. The most popular form is called décima espinela after Vicente Espinel (1550–1624), a Spanish writer, poet, and musician from the Siglo de Oro who used it extensively throughout his compositions.
The dé ...
poetry. Its music shows a mixture of 6/8 and 3/4 rhythms called Hemiola
In music, hemiola (also hemiolia) is the ratio 3:2. The equivalent Latin term is sesquialtera. In rhythm, ''hemiola'' refers to three beats of equal value in the time normally occupied by two beats. In pitch, ''hemiola'' refers to the interval of ...
. According to Sánchez de Fuentes, its first section is usually presented in a minor key, and its second section in its direct major relative key.
The term Guajira is now used mostly to describe a slow dance music in 4/4 time, a fusion of the Guajira and the Son
A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative.
Social issues
In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...
(called Guajira-Son). Singer and guitarist Guillermo Portabales
Guillermo Portabales (born ''José Guillermo Quesada Castillo''; 6 April 1911 – 25 October 1970) was a Cuban singer-songwriter and guitarist who popularized the '' guajira'' style of Cuban music from the 1930s through the 1960s. His languid, mel ...
was the most outstanding representative of this genre.
Criolla
Criolla is a genre of Cuban music which is closely related to the music of the Cuban Coros de Clave and a genre of Cuban popular music called Clave.
The Clave became a very popular genre in the Cuban vernacular theater and was created by composer Jorge Anckermann based on the style of the Coros de Clave. The Clave served, in turn, as a model for the creation of a new genre called Criolla. According to musicologist Helio Orovio, "Carmela", the first Criolla, was composed by Luis Casas Romero in 1909, which also created one of the most famous Criollas of all time, "El Mambí".
African heritage
Origins of Cuban African groups
Clearly, the origin of African groups in Cuba is due to the island's long history of slavery. Compared to the US, slavery started in Cuba much earlier and continued for decades afterwards. Cuba was the last country in the Americas to abolish the importation of slaves, and the second last to free the slaves. In 1807 the British Parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremacy ...
outlawed slavery, and from then on the British Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
acted to intercept Portuguese and Spanish slave ships. By 1860 the trade with Cuba was almost extinguished; the last slave ship to Cuba was in 1873. The abolition of slavery was announced by the Spanish Crown
, coatofarms = File:Coat_of_Arms_of_Spanish_Monarch.svg
, coatofarms_article = Coat of arms of the King of Spain
, image = Felipe_VI_in_2020_(cropped).jpg
, incumbent = Felipe VI
, incumbentsince = 19 Ju ...
in 1880, and put into effect in 1886. Two years later, Brazil abolished slavery.
Subsequent organization
The roots of most Afro-Cuban musical forms lie in the cabildos, self-organized social clubs for the African slaves, separate cabildos for separate cultures. The cabildos were formed mainly from four groups: the Yoruba (the Lucumi in Cuba); the Congolese (Palo in Cuba); Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a region ...
(the Fon or Arará). Other cultures were undoubtedly present, more even than listed above, but in smaller numbers, and they did not leave such a distinctive presence.
Cabildos preserved African cultural traditions, even after the abolition of slavery
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
in 1886. At the same time, African religions were transmitted from generation to generation throughout Cuba, Haiti, other islands and Brazil. These religions, which had a similar but not identical structure, were known as ''Lucumi'' or ''Regla de Ocha'' if they derived from the Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
, ''Palo
Palo may refer to:
Places
* Palo, Argentina, a village in Argentina
* Palo, Estonia, village in Meremäe Parish, Võru County, Estonia
* Palo, Huesca, municipality in the province of Huesca, Spain
* Palo, Iowa, United States, a town located wit ...
'' from Central Africa
Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, ...
, ''Vodú'' from Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...
, and so on. The term ''Santería'' was first introduced to account for the way African spirits were joined to Catholic saints, especially by people who were both baptized and initiated, and so were genuinely members of both groups. Outsiders picked up the word and have tended to use it somewhat indiscriminately. It has become a kind of catch-all word, rather like salsa in music.p171; p258
African sacred music in Cuba
All these African cultures had musical traditions, which survive erratically to the present day, not always in detail, but in general style. The best preserved are the African polytheistic religions, where, in Cuba at least, the instruments, the language, the chants, the dances and their interpretations are quite well preserved. In what other American countries are the religious ceremonies conducted in the old language(s) of Africa? They certainly are in Lucumí ceremonies, though of course, back in Africa the language has moved on. What unifies all genuine forms of African music is the unity of polyrhythmic percussion, voice (call-and-response) and dance in well-defined social settings, and the absence of melodic instruments of an Arabic or European kind.
Yoruba and Congolese rituals
Religious traditions of African origin have survived in Cuba, and are the basis of ritual music, song and dance quite distinct from the secular music and dance. The religion of Yoruban origin is known as ''Lucumí'' or ''Regla de Ocha''; the religion of Congolese origin is known as ''Palo
Palo may refer to:
Places
* Palo, Argentina, a village in Argentina
* Palo, Estonia, village in Meremäe Parish, Võru County, Estonia
* Palo, Huesca, municipality in the province of Huesca, Spain
* Palo, Iowa, United States, a town located wit ...
'', as in ''palos del monte''. There are also, in the Oriente region, forms of Haitian ritual together with its own instruments, music etc.
Clave
The clave rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...
ic pattern is used as a tool for temporal organization in Afro-Cuban music, such as rumba
The term rumba may refer to a variety of unrelated music styles. Originally, "rumba" was used as a synonym for "party" in northern Cuba, and by the late 19th century it was used to denote the complex of secular music styles known as Cuban rumba ...
, conga de comparsa
A comparsa is a group of singers, musicians and dancers that take part in carnivals and other festivities in Spain and Latin America. Its precise meaning depends on the specific regional celebration. The most famous comparsas are those that parti ...
, son
A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative.
Social issues
In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...
, mambo (music)
Mambo is a genre of Cuban dance music pioneered by the charanga Arcaño y sus Maravillas in the late 1930s and later popularized in the big band style by Pérez Prado. It originated as a syncopated form of the danzón, known as danzón-mambo, wi ...
, salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
, Latin jazz
Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin American rhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, whic ...
, songo and timba
Timba is a Cuban genre of music based on Cuban ''son'' with ''salsa'', American
Funk/R&B and the strong influence of Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Timba rhythm sections differ from their salsa counterparts, because timba emphasizes the bass dru ...
. The five-stroke clave pattern (distributed in groups of 3 + 2 or 2 + 3 beats) represents the structural core of many Afro-Cuban rhythms. Just as a keystone holds an arch
An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it.
Arches may be synonymous with vaul ...
in place, the clave pattern holds the rhythm together in Afro-Cuban music.[Peñalosa, David (2009: 81). ''The Clave Matrix; Afro-Cuban Rhythm: Its Principles and African Origins.'' Redway, CA: Bembe Inc. .] The clave pattern originated in sub-Saharan African music traditions
In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of music is not limited to entertainment: it serves a purpose to the local community and helps in the conduct of daily routines. Traditional African music supplies appropriate music and dance for work ...
, where it serves essentially the same function as it does in Cuba. The pattern is also found in the African diaspora
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...
musics of Haitian Vodou drumming
Vodou drumming and associated ceremonies are folk ritual faith system of henotheistic religion of Haitian Vodou originated and inextricable part of Haitian culture.
Vodou drumming is widely practiced in urban centres in Haiti and some cities in No ...
and Afro-Brazilian music
The music of Brazil encompasses various regional musical styles influenced by European, American, African and Amerindian forms. Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as forró, repente, coco de roda, axé, sertanejo, ...
. The clave pattern is used in North American popular music
American popular music has had a profound effect on music across the world. The country has seen the rise of popular styles that have had a significant influence on global culture, including ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, rock, bluegrass, count ...
as a rhythmic motif or ostinato
In music, an ostinato (; derived from Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include ...
, or simply a form of rhythmic decoration.
Cuban Carnival
In Cuba, the word ''comparsa
A comparsa is a group of singers, musicians and dancers that take part in carnivals and other festivities in Spain and Latin America. Its precise meaning depends on the specific regional celebration. The most famous comparsas are those that parti ...
'' refers to the "Cabildos de Nación" neighbourhood groups that took part in the carnival
Carnival is a Catholic Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival typi ...
authorized by the Spanish government on the Three Kings Day (Día de Reyes) during the colonial period. Conga
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
is of African origin, and derives from street celebrations of the African spirits. The distinction is blurred today, but in the past the congas have been prohibited from time to time. Carnival as a whole was banned by the revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective, to refer to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.
...
government for many years, and still does not take place with the regularity of old. Conga drums
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
are played (along with other typical instruments) in comparsas of all kinds. Santiago de Cuba and Havana were the two main centers for street carnivals. Two types of dance music (at least) owe their origin to comparsa music:
Conga
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
: an adaptation of comparsa music and dance for social dances. Eliseo Grenet
Eliseo Grenet Sánchez (12 June 1893 in Havana – 4 December 1950) was a Cuban pianist and a leading composer/arranger of the day. He composed music for stage shows and films, and some famous Cuban dance music.Giro, Radamés 2007. ''Diccionar ...
may be the person who first created this music,p408 but it was the Lecuona Cuban Boys The Lecuona Cuban Boys was a popular Cuban orchestra which toured the world for over forty years.
The band was founded by Ernesto Lecuona, whose role was that of a patron-entrepreneur. He did not actually play with the band, but sometimes gave a pi ...
who took it around the world. The conga became, and perhaps still is, the best-known Cuban music and dance style for non-latins.
Mozambique
Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
is a comparsa-type dance music developed by '' Pello el Afrokan'' (Pedro Izquierdo) in 1963. It had a brief period of high popularity, peaked in 1965, and was soon forgotten. Apparently, to make it work properly, it needed 16 drums plus other percussion and dancers.
Tumba francesa
Immigrants from Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...
settled in Oriente and established their style of music, called Tumba Francesa, which uses its own type of drum, dance and song. It embodies one of the oldest and most tangible links to the Afro-Haitian heritage of Cuba's Oriente province and developed from an 18th-century fusion of music from Dahomey in West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...
and traditional French dances. This fossil genre survives to the present day in Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
and Haiti, performed by specialized folk ensembles.
Contradanza
The Contradanza is an important precursor of several later popular dances. It arrived in Cuba in the late 18th century from Europe where it had been developed first as the English country dance, and then as the French contradanse. The origin of the word is a corruption of the English term "country dance". Manuel Saumell
Manuel Saumell Robredo (19 April 1818 – 14 August 1870), was a Cuban composer known for his invention and development of genuinely creolized forms of music. For this reason he gets the credit for being the first to cultivate Cuban musical nation ...
wrote over fifty contradanzas (in 2/4 or 6/8 time), in which his rhythmic and melodic inventiveness was astonishing.
The Contradanza is a communal sequence dance, with the dance figures conforming to a set pattern. The selection of figures for a particular dance was usually set by a master of ceremonies or dance leader. There were two parts of 16 bars each, danced in a line or square format. The tempo and style of the music was bright and fairly fast.
The earliest Cuban creole composition of a Contradanza appeared published in Havana in 1803 and was named ''San Pascual bailón''. This version shows for the first time the well known rhythm of "Tango" or "Habanera" which differentiates it from the European contradance. The Cubans developed a number of creolized version, such as the "paseo", "cadena", "sostenido" and "cedazo". This creolization is an early example of the influence of the African traditions in the Caribbean. Most of the musicians were black or mulatto (even early in the 19th century there were many freed slaves and mixed race persons living in Cuban towns). "The women of Havana have a furious taste for dancing; they spend entire nights elevated, agitated, crazy and pouring sweat until they fall spent."
The contradanza supplanted the minuet as the most popular dance until from 1842 on, it gave way to the habanera, a quite different style.
Danza
This genere, the offspring of the contradanza, was also danced in lines or squares. It was also a brisk form of music and dance in double or triple time. A repeated 8-bar paseo was followed by two 16-bar sections called the primera and segunda. One famous composer of danzas was Ignacio Cervantes
Ignacio Cervantes Kawanag (Havana, 31 July 1847 – Havana, 29 April 1905) was a Cuban pianist and composer. He was influential in the creolization of Cuban music.
A child prodigy, he was taught by pianist Juan Miguel Joval, later by composer ...
, whose forty-one danzas cubanas were a landmark in musical nationalism. This type of dance was eventually replaced by the danzón, which was, like the habanera, much slower and more sedate.
Habanera
The habanera developed out of the contradanza
''Contradanza'' (also called ''contradanza criolla'', ''danza'', ''danza criolla'', or ''habanera'') is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th centu ...
in the early 19th century. Its great novelty was that it was ''sung'', as well as played and danced. Written in 2/4 meter, the Habanera is characterized by an expressive and languid melodious development and its characteristic rhythm called "Habanera Rhythm."
The dance style of the habanera is slower and more stately than the danza. By the 1840s habaneras were written, sung, and danced in Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Spain. Since about 1900 the habanera has been a relic dance; but the music has a period charm, and there are some famous compositions, such as ''Tú'' from Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes, which has been recorded in many versions.
Versions of habanera-type compositions have appeared in the music of Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
, Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become on ...
, Saint-Saëns, Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
, Fauré, Albeniz. The rhythm is similar to that of the tango
Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...
, and some believe the habanera is the musical father of the tango.
Danzón
The European influence on Cuba's later musical development is represented by danzón
Danzón is the official musical genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring se ...
, an elegant musical form that was once more popular than the Son in Cuba. It is a descendant of the creolized Cuban contradanza
''Contradanza'' (also called ''contradanza criolla'', ''danza'', ''danza criolla'', or ''habanera'') is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th centu ...
. The danzón marks the change from the communal sequence dance style of the late 18th century to the couple dances of later times. The stimulus for this was the success of the once-scandalous walz, where couples danced facing each other, independently from other couples and not as part of a pre-set structure. The danzón was the first Cuban dance to adopt such methods, though there is a difference between the two dances. The walz is a progressive ballroom dance where couples move round the floor in an anti-clockwise direction; the danzón is a 'pocket-handkerchief' dance where a couple stays within a small area of the floor.
The danzón
Danzón is the official musical genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring se ...
was developed by Miguel Faílde Miguel Faílde Pérez (23 December 1852, in Guacamaro, Matanzas – 26 December 1921) was a Cuban musician and bandleader. He was the official originator of the danzón, composer of the first danzón, Las alturas de Simpson, and the founder of the ...
in Matanzas
Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...
, the official date of origin being 1879. Failde's was an orquesta típica
Orquesta típica, or simply a típica, is a Latin American term for a band which plays popular music. The details vary from country to country. The term tends to be used for groups of medium size (about 8 to 12 musicians) in some well-defined in ...
, a form derived from military bands, using brass, kettle-drums etc. The later development of the charanga was more suited to the indoor salon and is an orchestral format still popular today in Cuba and some other countries. The charanga uses double bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...
, cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
, violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
s, flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
, piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
, paila criolla
Timbales () or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size.Orovio, Helio 1981. ''Diccionario de la música cubana: biográfico ...
and güiro
The güiro () is a Puerto Rican percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines (see photo) along the notches to produce a ratchet sound.
The güiro ...
. This change in instrumental set-up is illustrated in Early Cuban bands Early Cuban bands played popular music for dances and theatres during the period 1780–1930. During this period Cuban music became creolized, and its European and African origins gradually changed to become genuinely Cuban. Instrumentation and ...
.
From time to time in its 'career', the danzón acquired African influences in its musical structure. It became more syncopated
In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...
, especially in its third part. The credit for this is given to José Urfé, who worked elements of the son into the last part of the danzón in his composition ''El bombin de Barreto'' (1910). Both the danzón and the charanga line-up have been strongly influential in later developments.
The danzón was exported to popular acclaim throughout Latin America, especially Mexico. It is now a relic, both in music and in dance, but its highly orchestrated descendants live on in charangas that Faílde and Urfé would likely not recognize. Juan Formell
Juan Climaco Formell Cortina (August 2, 1942 – May 1, 2014) was a Cuban bassist, composer, and arranger, best known as the director of Los Van Van. He was a creator of popular danceable music and credited with bringing electronic instrumentatio ...
has had a huge influence through his reorganization of first Orquesta Revé
Timba is a Cuban genre of music based on Cuban ''son'' with ''salsa'', American
Funk/R&B and the strong influence of Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Timba rhythm sections differ from their salsa counterparts, because timba emphasizes the bass dru ...
, and later Los Van Van
Los Van Van is one of the leading musical groups of post-revolutionary Cuba. It was founded in 1969 by bassist Juan Formell, who directed the band until his death in 2014. Formell and former band members Changuito and Pupy are some of the most im ...
.
Danzonete
Early Danzons were purely instrumental. The first to introduce a vocal part in a Danzón
Danzón is the official musical genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring se ...
was Aniceto Díaz (in 1927 in Matanzas
Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...
), that was called ''Rompiendo la rutina'', thereby creating a new genre called the Danzonete. Later, the black singer Barbarito Diez joined the charanga of Antonio María Romeu
Antonio María Romeu Marrero (11 September 1876 – 18 January 1955) was a Cuban pianist, composer and bandleader. His orchestra was Cuba's leading Charanga (Cuba), charanga for over thirty years, specializing in the danzón. Throughout his ca ...
in 1935 and, over the years, recorded eleven albums of Danzonetes. All later forms of the Danzón
Danzón is the official musical genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring se ...
have included vocals.
Guaracha
On January 20, 1801, Buenaventura Pascual Ferrer published a note in a newspaper called "El Regañón de La Habana," in which he refers to certain chants that "run outside there through vulgar voices". Between them he mentioned a "guaracha" named "La Guabina", about which he says: "in the voice of those that sings it, tastes like any thing dirty, indecent or disgusting that you can think about." At a later time, in an undetermined date, "La Guabina" appears published between the first musical scores printed in Havana at the beginning of the 19th century.[Linares, María teresa: La guaracha cubana. Imagen del humor criollo. .]
According to the commentaries published in "El Regañón de La Habana", it can be concluded that those "guarachas" were very popular within the Havana population at that time, because in the same previously mentioned article the author says: "but most importantly, what bothers me most is the liberty with which a number of chants are sung throughout the streets and town homes, where innocence is insulted and morals offended ... by many individuals, not just of the lowest class, but also by some people that are supposed to be called well educated." Therefore, it can be said that those "guarachas" of a very audacious content, were apparently already sung within a wide social sector of the Havana population.
According to Alejo Carpentier (quoting Buenaventura Pascual Ferrer), at the beginning of the 19th century there were held in Havana up to fifty dance parties every day, where the famous "guaracha" was sung and danced, among other popular pieces.
The guaracha
The guaracha () is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical thea ...
is a genre of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. It originated at the end of the 18th century, and during the early 20th century was still often played in the brothels and other places in Havana. The lyrics were full of slang, and dwelt on events and people in the news. Rhythmically, guaracha exhibits a series of rhythm combinations, such as 6/8 with 2/4.
Many of the early trovadores, such as Manuel Corona (who worked in a brothel area of Havana), composed and sang guarachas as a balance for the slower bolero
Bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It has ...
s and canciones. The satirical lyric content also fitted well with the son, and many bands played both genres. In the mid-20th century the style was taken up by the conjunto
The term ''conjunto'' (, literally 'group', 'ensemble') refers to several types of small musical ensembles present in different Latin American musical traditions, mainly in Mexico and Cuba. While Mexican conjuntos play styles such as '' norteño' ...
s and big bands as a type of up-tempo music. Today it seems no longer to exist as a distinct musical form; it has been absorbed into the vast maw of Salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
. Singers who can handle the fast lyrics and are good improvisors are called ''guaracheros'' or ''guaracheras''.
Musical theatre
From the 18th century (at least) to modern times, popular theatrical formats used, and gave rise to, music and dance. Many famous composers and musicians had their careers launched in the theatres, and many famous compositions got their first airing on the stage. In addition to staging some European operas and operettas, Cuban composers gradually developed ideas that better suited their audience. Recorded music
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, Mechanical system, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of ...
was to be the couduit for Cuban music to reach the world. The most recorded artist in Cuba up to 1925 was a singer at the ''Alhambra'', Adolfo Colombo
Adolfo Columbo ( Canary Islands, 1868 – Havana 1953) was a leading singer in the Alhambra Theatre in Havana, and also an actor and a leading personality in the theatre. Colombo was the most recorded artist in Cuba up to 1925: records show he ...
. Records show he recorded about 350 numbers between 1906 and 1917.
The first theatre in Havana opened in 1776. The first Cuban-composed opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
appeared in 1807. Theatrical music was hugely important in the 19th century[Leal, Rine 1986. ''Teatro del siglo XIX''. La Habana.] and the first half of the 20th century; its significance only began to wane with the change in political and social weather in the second part of the 20th century. Radio, which began in Cuba in 1922, helped the growth of popular music because it provided publicity and a new source of income for the artists.
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a small-scale light operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...
format. Starting off with imported Spanish content ( List of zarzuela composers), it developed into a running commentary on Cuba's social and political events and problems. Zarzuela has the distinction of providing Cuba's first recordings: the soprano Chalía Herrera (1864–1968) made, outside Cuba, the first recordings by a Cuban artist. She recorded numbers from the zarzuela ''Cádiz
Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia.
Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...
'' in 1898 on unnumbered Bettini Bettini is a surname of Italian origin and it may refer to:
*Alessandro Bettini (1821–1898), Italian tenor involved in the UK legal case of Bettini v Gye
* Amalia Bettini (1809–1894), Italian stage actress
*Antonio Bettini (1396–1487), Italia ...
cylinders.
Zarzuela reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century. A string of front-rank composers such as Gonzalo Roig
Gonzalo Roig Lobo (Havana, 20 July 1890 – Havana, 13 June 1970) was a Cuban composer, pianist, violinist and musical director. He was a pioneer of the symphonic movement in Cuba. His most popular works are the zarzuela ''Cecilia Valdés'' an ...
, Eliseo Grenet
Eliseo Grenet Sánchez (12 June 1893 in Havana – 4 December 1950) was a Cuban pianist and a leading composer/arranger of the day. He composed music for stage shows and films, and some famous Cuban dance music.Giro, Radamés 2007. ''Diccionar ...
, Ernesto Lecuona and Rodrigo Prats
Rodrigo Prats (February 7, 1909 – September 15, 1980) was a Cuban composer, arranger, violinist, pianist and orchestral director.
Biography
The son of a musician, Jaime Prats, Rodrigo began to study music at the age of nine. He studied ...
produced a series of hits for the ''Regina'' and ''Martí'' theatres in Havana. Great stars like the ''vedette'' Rita Montaner
Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda (20 August 1900 – 17 April 1958), known as Rita Montaner, was a Cuban singer, pianist and actress. In Cuban parlance, she was a '' vedette'' (a star), and was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and ...
, who could sing, play the piano, dance and act, were the Cuban equivalents of Mistinguett
Mistinguett (, born Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois; 5 April 1873 – 5 January 1956) was a French actress and singer. She was at one time the highest-paid female entertainer in the world.
Early life
The daughter of Antoine Bourgeois, a 31-year- ...
and Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted Fran ...
in Paris. Some of the best known zarzuelas are ''La virgen morena'' (Grenet), ''La Niña Rita'' (Grenet and Lecuona), ''María la O'', ''El batey'', ''Rosa la China'' (all Lecuona); Gonzalo Roig with ''La Habana de noche''; Rodrigo Prats with ''Amalia Batista'' and ''La perla del caribe''; and above all, ''Cecilia Valdés
''Cecilia Valdés'' is both a novel by the Cuban writer Cirilo Villaverde (1812–1894), and a zarzuela based on the novel. It is a work of importance for its quality, and its revelation of the interaction of classes and races in Havana, C ...
'' (the musical of the most famous Cuban novel of the 19th century, with music by Roig and script by Prats and Agustín Rodríguez). Artists who were introduced to the public in the lyric theatre include Caridad Suarez, María de los Angeles Santana, Esther Borja
Esther Borja Lima (5 December 1913 – 28 December 2013) was a Cuban operatic soprano and actress.
Havana-born Esther Borja Lima was trained in solfége and music theory by Juan Elósegui, and in singing by Rubén Lepchutz. She graduated as a te ...
and Ignacio Villa, who had such a round, black face that Rita Montaner called him Bola de Nieve
Bola de Nieve (literally ''Snowball'') (11 September 1911 – 2 October 1971), born Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández, was a Cuban singer-pianist and songwriter. His name originates from his round, black face.
Villa Fernández was born in Guanaba ...
('Snowball').
Another famous singer was Maruja González Linares. Born from Spanish parents in the Mexican locality of Mérida, Yucatán in 1904, González travelled from Cuba to the US at a very young age. She studied vocal techniques in Cuba, where she made her debut in 1929 as a lyrical singer in the Company of Maestro Ernesto Lecuona. González performed in several theaters of Havana before going on a tour through the United States and, upon her return to Havana, she sang ''La Bayadere
LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* La (musical note), or A, the sixth note
* "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figur ...
'' and ''The Merry Widow
''The Merry Widow'' (german: Die lustige Witwe, links=no ) is an operetta by the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt t ...
'' in the same city. At the beginning of the 1930s, she signed a number of contracts in Latin America and in Spain. She married Perico Suarez. The Cuban Revolution caught her abroad and she never returned to her country. She died in Miami in 1999.
Bufo theatre
Cuban ''bufo theatre'' is a form of comedy, ribald and satirical, with stock figures imitating types that might be found anywhere in the country. Bufo had its origin around 1800-15 as an older form, ''tonadilla Tonadilla was a Spanish musical song form of theatrical origin; not danced. The genre was a type of short, satirical musical comedy popular in 18th-century Spain, and later in Cuba and other Spanish colonial countries.
It originated as a song type, ...
'', began to vanish from Havana. Francisco Covarrubias the 'caricaturist' (1775–1850) was its creator. Gradually, the comic types threw off their European models and became more and more creolized and Cuban. Alongside, the music followed. Argot from slave barracks and poor barrios found its way into lyrics that are those of the guaracha
The guaracha () is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical thea ...
:
::Una mulata me ha muerto!
::Y no prenden a esa mulata?
::Como ha de quedar hombre vivo
::si no prenden a quien mata!
::La mulata es como el pan;
::se debe comer caliente,
::que en dejandola enfriar
::ni el diablo le mete el diente!p218
::(A mulata's done for me!
::What's more, they don't arrest her!
::How can any man live
::If they don't take this killer?
::A mulatta is like fresh bread
::You gotta eat it while it's hot
::If you leave it till it's cool
::Even the devil can't get a bite!)
The "guaracha" occupied a predominant place within the development of vernacular theater in Cuba, which appearance at the beginning of the 19th century coincides with the emergence of the first autochthonous Cuban musical genres, the "guaracha" and the"contradanza.". Since 1812, Francisco Covarrubias (considered as the father of the Bufo Theater) gradually substituted in his theatrical pieces the typical characters of the Spanish "tonadilla escénica" with creole characters such as "guajiros", "monteros", "carreteros" or "peones". Those structural transformations were also associated to certain changes in the musical background of the pieces. Thus, the Spanish genres such as "jácaras", "tiranas", "boleras" or "villancicos", were substituted by "guarachas", "décimas" and "canciones cubanas."[Carpentier, ALejo. La música en Cuba. Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1979.]
Other theatrical forms
Vernacular theatre of various types often includes music. Formats rather like the British Music Hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...
, or the American Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
, still occur, where an audience is treated to a potpourri
Potpourri ( ) is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant materials used to provide a gentle natural scent, commonly in residential settings. It is often placed in a decorative bowl.
The word "potpourri" comes into English from the French ...
of singers, comedians, bands, sketches and speciality acts. Even in cinemas during the silent movies, singers and instrumentalists appeared in the interval, and a pianist played during the films. Bola de Nieve and María Teresa Vera
María Teresa Vera (February 6, 1895 in Guanajay – December 17, 1965 in Havana) was a Cuban singer, guitarist and composer. She was an outstanding example of the Cuban trova movement.
Career
She started her career as a singer in 1911 in a the ...
played in cinemas in their early days. Burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. was also common in Havana before 1960.
The Black Curros (Negros Curros)
In reference to the emergence of the Guaracha and, at a later time, also of the Urban Rumba in Havana and Matanzas, it is important to mention an important and picturesque social sector called Black Curros (Negros Curros). Composed of free blacks that had arrived from Seville on an undetermined date, this group was integrated to the population of free blacks and mulattos that lived in the marginal zones of the city of Havana.
José Victoriano Betancourt a Cuban "costumbrista" writer from the 19th century described them as follows: "they he curroshad a peculiar aspect, and was enough to look at them to recognize them as curros: their long hunks of kinky braids, falling over their face and neck like big millipedes, their teeth cut (sharp and pointed) to the carabalí style, their fine embroidered cloth shirts, their pants, almost always white, or with colored stripes, narrow at the waist and very wide in the legs; the canvas shoes, cut low with silver buckles, the short jacket with pointed tail, the exaggerated straw hat, with black hanging silk tassles, and the thick gold hoops that they wore in their ears, from which they hung harts and padlocks of the same metal, forming an ornament that only they wear; ... those were the curros of El Manglar (The mangrove neighborhood)."
The curro was dedicated to laziness, theft and procuring, while his companion, the curra, also called "mulata de rumbo", exercised the prostitution in Cuba
Prostitution in Cuba is not officially illegal; however, there is legislation against pimps, sexual exploitation of minors, and pornography. Sex tourism has existed in the country, both before and after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Many Cubans do not ...
. According to Carlos Noreña, she was well known for the use of burato shawls of meticulous work and plaited fringes, for which they used to pay from nine to ten ounces of gold", as well as by the typical clacking (chancleteo) they produced with their wooden slippers.
But the Curros also provided entertainment, including songs and dances to the thousands of Spanish men that came to the Island every year in the ships that followed the "Carrera de Indias", a route established by the Spanish Crown for their galleons in order to avoid attacks from pirates and privateers, and stayed for months until they returned to the Port of Seville.
Being subject to the influence of both the Spanish and the African culture from birth, they are supposed to have played an important role in the creolization of the Spanish song-dances original proto-type (copla-estribillo) that originated the Cuban Guaracha. The Black curro and the Mulata de Rumbo (Black Curra) disappeared since the mid-19th century by integrating to the Havana general population, but their picturesque images survived in social prototypes manifested in the characters of the Bufo Theater.
The famous "Mulatas de Rumbo" (mulatto characters) Juana Chambicú and María La O, as well as the black "cheches" (bullies) José Caliente "who rips in half those who oppose him," Candela, "negrito that flies and cuts with the knife," as well as the Black Curro Juán Cocuyo, were strongly linked to the characteristic image of the Black Curro and to the ambiance of the Guaracha and the Rumba.
Rumba
The word Rumba is an abstract term that has been applied with different purposes to a wide variety of subjects for a very long time. From a semantic point of view, the term rumba is included in a group of words with similar meaning such as conga, milonga, bomba, tumba, samba, bamba, mambo, tambo, tango, cumbé, cumbia and candombe. All of them denote a Congolese origin due to the utilization of sound combinations such as, mb, ng and nd, that are typical of the Niger-Congo linguistic complex.
Maybe the most ancient and general of its meanings is that of a feast or "holgorio". As far as the second half of the 19th century, this word can be found used several times to represent a feast in a short story called "La mulata de rumbo", from the Cuban folklorist Francisco de Paula Gelabert: "I have more enjoyment and fun in a rumbita with those of my color and class", or "Leocadia was going to bed, as I was telling you, nothing less than at twelve noon, when one of his friends from the rumbas arrived, along with another young man that he wanted to introduce to her." According to Alejo Carpentier "it is significant that the word rumba have passed to the Cuban language as a synonym of holgorio, lewd dance, merrymaking with low class women (mujeres del rumbo)."
As an example, In the case of the Yuka, Makuta and Changüí feasts in Cuba, as well as the Milonga and the Tango in Argentina, the word rumba was originally utilized to nominate a festive gathering; and after some time it was used to name the musical and dance genres that were played at those gatherings.
Among many others, some ultizations of the term "rumba include a cover-all term for faster Cuban music which started in the early 1930s with ''The Peanut Vendor
"El manisero", known in English as "The Peanut Vendor", is a Cuban son-pregón composed by Moisés Simons. Together with "Guantanamera", it is arguably the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician. "The Peanut Vendor" has been recorde ...
''. This term was replaced during the 1970s by salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
, which is also a cover-all term for marketing the Cuban music and other Hispano-Caribbean genres to non-Cubans. In the international Latin-American dance syllabus rumba is a misnomer for the slow Cuban rhythm more accurately called bolero-son.
Rumba and guaracha
Some scholars have pointed out that in reference to the utilization of the terms rumba and guaracha, there is possibly a case of synonym
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
y, or the use of two different words to denominate the same thing. According to María Teresa Linares: "during the first years of the 20th century, there were used at the end of the vernacular (Bufo) theater plays some musical fragments that the authors sang, and that were called closing rumba (rumba final)" and she continues explaining that those (rumbas) "were certainly guarachas." The musical pieces used to close those plays may have been indistinctly called rumbas or guarachas, because those terms didn't denote any generic or structural difference between them. Linares also said in reference to this subject: "Some recordings of guarachas and rumbas have been preserved that do not differentiate between them in the guitar parts – when it was a small group, duo or trio, or by the theater orchestra or a piano. The labels of the recordings stated: dialogue and rumba (diálogo y rumba)."
Urban rumba
Urban rumba (also called Rumba (de solar o de cajón)), is an amalgamation of several African drumming and dance traditions, combined with Spanish influences. According to Cuban musicologist Argeliers León: "In the feast that constituted a rumba concurred, therefore, determined African contributions, but also converged other elements from Hispanic roots, that were already incorporated to the expressions that appeared in the new population emerging in the Island."
Rumba (de solar o de cajón) is a secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
musical style from the docks and the less prosperous areas of Havana and Matanzas
Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...
. A the beginning, rumba musicians used a trio of wooden boxes ( cajones) to play, that were substituted at a later time by drums, similar in appearance to conga drums
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
. The treble drum is called "quinto", the medium range drum is called "macho or tres-dos" (three-two), because its essential rhythm is based on the Cuban clave pattern, and the bass drum is called "hembra o salidor," because it usually began or "broke in" (rompía) the rumba. In the Rumba ensemble they also utilize two sticks or spoons to beat over a hollow piece of bamboo called "guagua" or "catá," as well as the Cuban Claves, the Güiro and some rattles from bantu origin called "nkembi".
The vocal part of the rumba corresponds to a modified version of the ancient Spanish style of "copla-estribillo" (quatrain-refrain), including a "montuno" section that one may consider an expanded or developed "refrain" that constitute an independent section which include the call and response
Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...
style, so typical of the African traditions.
From the many rumba styles that began to appear during the end of the 19th century called "Spanish times" (Tiempo'españa), such as tahona, jiribilla, palatino and resedá, three basic Rumba forms have survived: the Columbia, the guaguancó
Guaguancó () is a subgenre of Cuban rumba, combining percussion, voices, and dance. There are two main styles: Havana and Matanzas.
Percussion
* battery of three conga drummers: the ''tumba'' (lowest), ''tres dos'' (middle, playing a counter-cl ...
and the yambú
Rumba is a secular genre of Cuban music involving dance, percussion, and song. It originated in the northern regions of Cuba, mainly in urban Havana and Matanzas, during the late 19th century. It is based on African music and dance traditions, ...
. The Columbia, played in 6/8 time, is often as a solo dance performed only by a male performer. It is fast and swift and also includes aggressive and acrobatic moves. The guaguancó
Guaguancó () is a subgenre of Cuban rumba, combining percussion, voices, and dance. There are two main styles: Havana and Matanzas.
Percussion
* battery of three conga drummers: the ''tumba'' (lowest), ''tres dos'' (middle, playing a counter-cl ...
is danced by a pair of one man and one woman. The dance simulates the man's pursuit of the woman. The yambú
Rumba is a secular genre of Cuban music involving dance, percussion, and song. It originated in the northern regions of Cuba, mainly in urban Havana and Matanzas, during the late 19th century. It is based on African music and dance traditions, ...
, now a relic, featured a burlesque imitation of an old man walking with a stick. All forms of rumba are accompanied by song or chants.
Rumba (de solar o de cajón) is today a fossil genre usually seen in Cuba in performances of professional groups. There are also amateur groups based on ''Casas de Cultura'' (Culture Centers), and on work groups. Like all aspects of life in Cuba, dance and music are organised by the state through Ministries and their various committees.
Coros de Clave
Coros de Clave were popular choral groups that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century in Havana and other Cuban cities.
The Cuban government only allowed black people, slaves or free, to cultivate their cultural traditions within the boundaries of certain mutual aid societies, which were founded during the 16th century. According to David H. Brown, those societies, called Cabildos, "provided in times of sickness and death, held masses for deceased members, collected funds to buy nation-brethren out of slavery, held regular dances and diversions on Sundays and feast days, and sponsored religious masses, processions and dancing carnival groups (now called comparsas) around the annual cycle of Catholic festival days."
Within the Cabildos of certain neighborhoods from Havana, Matanzas
Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...
, Sancti Spíritus
Sancti Spíritus () is a municipality and capital city of the province of Sancti Spíritus Province, Sancti Spíritus in central Cuba and one of the oldest Cuban European settlements. Sancti Spíritus is the genitive case of Latin language, Lat ...
and Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
, some choral groups were founded during the 19th century that organized competitive activities, and in some occasions were visited by local authorities and neighbors that gave them money and presents. Those choral societies were called Coros de Clave, probably after the instrument that used to accompany their performances, the Cuban Claves
Claves (; ) are a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of short, wooden sticks about 20–25 centimeters (8–10 inches) long and about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in diameter. Although traditionally made of wood (typically rosewood, ebony o ...
.
The accompaniment of the choirs also included a guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
and the percussion was executed over the sound box of an American banjo from which the strings were removed, due to the fact that African drums performance was strictly forbidden in Cuban cities. The style of the Coros de Clave music, and particulally its rhythm, originated at a later time a popular song genre called Clave, which most probable served as the original prototype for the creation of the Criolla genre. Both genres, the Clave and the Criolla became very popular within the Cuban vernacular theater repertoire.
Rural rumba
In a similar way as the first Spanish song-dances spread from the cities to the countryside, also the characteristics of the Cuban Guaracha
The guaracha () is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical thea ...
, that enjoyed great popularity in Havana, began to spread to the rural areas in an undetermined time during the 19th century. This process was not difficult at all if one considers how close one to the other were the urban and the rural areas in Cuba at that time. That was why the Cuban peasants (guajiros) began to include in their parties called "guateques" or "changüís", and in feasts such as the "fiestas patronales" (patron saint celebrations) and the "parrandas", some Rumbitas (little rumbas) that were very similar to the urban Guarachas, which binary meter contrasted with the ternary beat of their traditional "tonadas" and "zapateos".
Those little rural rumbas have been called by renowned musicologist Danilo Orozco "proto-sones", "soncitos primigenios", "rumbitas", "nengones"or "marchitas," and some of them, such as: Caringa, Papalote, Doña Joaquina, Anda Pepe and the Tingotalango
The musical bow (bowstring or string bow, a subset of bar zithers) is a simple string instrument used by a number of South African peoples, which is also found in the Americas via slave trade. It consists of a flexible, usually wooden, stick 1 ...
have been preserved until the present time.
The Rumbitas were considered as Proto-sones (primeval Sones), because of the evident analogy that its structural components show with the Son, which emerged in Havana during the first decades of the 20th century. The Rumbitas may be considered as the original prototype of this popular genre.
According to musicologist Virtudes Feliú, those Rumbitas appeared in cities and towns throughout the entire territory of the Island, such as: Ciego de Ávila, Sancti Espíritus, Cienfuegos, Camagüey, Puerta de Golpe in Pinar del Río and Bejucal in Havana, as well as Remedios in Villa Clara and Isla de Pinos (Pines Island).
There are many references to the Cuban Independence Wars (1868-1898), related to the rural Rumbitas, in the Eastern region of the country as well as in the Western region and Isla de Pinos, which suggest that their emergence took place approximately during the second half of the 19th century.
The rural Rumbitas included a greater number of African characteristics in comparison with the Cuban Guaracha, due to the gradual integration of free Afro-Cuban citizens to the rural environment.
Since the 16th century, thanks to a government approved program called "manumisión", the black slaves were allowed to pay for their freedom with their own savings. Therefore, a larger number of free blacks were dedicated to the manual labors in the fields than in the cities and some of them were also able to become proprietaries of land and slaves.
Characteristics of the rural rumba
One of the most salient characteristics of the rural Rumbitas was its own form, very similar to the African typical song structure. In this case, the entire piece was based on a single musical fragment or phrase of short duration that was repeated, with some variations, time and time again; often alternating with a choir. This style was called "Montuno" (literally "from the countryside") due to its rural origin.
Another characteristic of the new genre was the superposition of different rhythmic patterns simultaneously executed, similarly to the way it is utilized in the Urban Rumba, which is also a common trait of the African musical tradition. Those layers or "franjas de sonoridades" according to Argeliers León, were assigned to different instruments that were gradually incorporated to the group. Therefore, the ensemble grew from the traditional Tiple and Güiro, to a one that included: guitar, "bandurria", Cuban lute, claves, and other instruments such as the" tumbandera", the "marímbula
The marímbula () is a plucked box musical instrument of the Caribbean. In Cuba it is common in the changüí genre, as well as old styles of son. In Mexico, where it is known as marimbol is played in son jarocho; in the Dominican Republic, w ...
", the "botija
The botija (botijuela; bunga) is a Caribbean musical instrument of the aerophone type. The botija is a potbellied earthenware jug or jar with two openings and was used in the early son sextetos in Cuba as a bass instrument.
Origin
The botija wa ...
", the bongoes, the common "machete" (cutlass) and the accordion.
Some important musical functions were assigned to the sonority layers, such as the: "Time Line" or Clave Rhythm performed by the claves, a "1-eighth note + 2-sixteenth notes" rhythm played by the güiro or the machete, the patterns of the "guajeo" by the Tres (instrument), the improvisation on the bongoes and the anticipated bass on the "tumbandera" or the "botija".
Proto-son
The origin of the Cuban son can be traced to the rural rumbas, called proto-sones (primeval sones) by musicologist Danilo Orozco. They show, in a partial or embryonic form, all the characteristics that at a later time were going to identify the Son style: The repetition of a phrase called ''montuno'', the clave pattern, a rhythmic counterpoint between different layers of the musical texture, the ''guajeo'' from the Tres, the rhythms from the guitar, the bongoes and the double bass and the call and response
Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...
style between soloist and choir.
According to Radamés Giro: at a later time the refrain (estribillo) or ''montuno'' was tied to a quatrain (cuarteta – copla) called ''regina'', which was how the peasants from the Eastern side of the country called the quatrain. In this way, the structure ''refrain–quatrain–refrain'' appears at a very early stage in the ''Son Oriental,'' like in one of the most ancient Sones called "Son de Máquina" (Machine Son) which comprises three ''reginas'' with its correspondent refrains.
During an investigative project about the Valera-Miranda family (old Soneros) conducted by Danilo Orozco in the region of Guantánamo, he recorded a sample of Nengón, which is considered an ancestor of the Changüí. It shows the previously mentioned ''refrain–quatrain–refrain'' structure. In this case, the several repetitions of the refrain constitute a true "montuno."
Refrain: Yo he nacido para ti nengón, yo he nacido para ti nengón, yo he nacido para ti Nengón... (I was born for you Nengón...)
Nengón
The "Nengón" is considered a Proto-Son, precursor of the Changüí and also of the Oriental Son. Its main characteristic is the alternance of improvised verses between a soloist and a choir. The Nengón is played with Tres, Guitar, Güiro and Tingotalango or Tumbandera.
Changüí
Changüí is a type of son from the eastern provinces (area of Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
and Guantánamo), formerly known as Oriente. It shares relevant characteristics with the Oriental Son in regard to rhythms, instruments and choral refrains; and at the same time it shows certain original elements.
Changüí exists today in the form of dozens of small groups, mostly from Guantanamo province. The instrumentation is similar to that of the early Son groups who set up in Havana before 1920. These son groups, for example, the early Sexteto Boloña and Sexteto Habanero, used either marimbulas or List of Caribbean aerophones, botijas as bass instruments before they changed over to the double bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...
, musically a more flexible instrument.
Changui is a genuinely distinctive music and culture practiced by residents of the Guantanamo province with its own distinctive social dance form (couple dance). Guantanameros engage in Changui in house parties (called Peñas), street parties, concerts at venues such as Casa de Changui, a weekly Monday night dance broadcast live on Radio Guantanamo, an annual Changui festival to celebrate the anniversary of Chito Latanble, and the bi-annual Festival de Changui. There is often a Changui function on most nights of the week at the Province.
Some modern orchestras, such as Orquesta Revé
Timba is a Cuban genre of music based on Cuban ''son'' with ''salsa'', American
Funk/R&B and the strong influence of Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Timba rhythm sections differ from their salsa counterparts, because timba emphasizes the bass dru ...
, have claimed Changüí as their main influence. Whether this is accurate, or not, is unclear.
Sucu-Sucu
We can also find in Isla de Pinos, at the opposite Western side of the Island a primeval Proto-Son called Sucu-Sucu, which also shows the same structure of the Oriental Proto-Sones. According to Maria Teresa Linares, In the Sucu-Sucu the music is similar to a Son Montuno in its formal, melodic, instrumental and harmonic structure. A soloist alternates with a choir and improvises on a quatrain or a "décima." The instrumental section is introduced by the Tres, gradually joined by the other instruments. The introduction of eight measures is followed by the refrain by the choir that alternates with the soloist several times.
An urban legend claims that the name "Sucu Sucu" came from the grandmother of one of the local musicians in la Isla de Juventud. The band was playing in the patio, and the dances were dancing while shuffling their feet on the sandy floor. The grandmother came out of the house to say "Please stop making noise with all that sucu sucu," referring to the sound of shuffling feet on a sandy floor. The legend claim that the name stuck, and the music the dancers were dancing too started to be named "Sucu Sucu".
Trova
In the 19th century, Santiago de Cuba became the focal point of a group of itinerant musicians, troubadours, who moved around earning their living by singing and playing the guitar. They were of great importance as composers, and their songs have been transcribed for all genres of Cuban music
Pepe Sánchez (trova), Pepe Sánchez, born José Sánchez (1856–1918), is known as the father of the ''trova'' style and the creator of the Cuban bolero.[Orovio, Helio 1995. ''El bolero latino''. La Habana.] He had no formal training in music. With remarkable natural talent, he composed numbers in his head and never wrote them down. As a result, most of these numbers are now lost for ever, though some two dozen or so survive because friends and disciples transcribed them. His first bolero, ''Tristezas'', is still remembered today. He also created advertisement jingles before radio was born. He was the model and teacher for the great trovadores who followed him.
The first, and one of the longest-lived, was Sindo Garay (1867–1968). He was an outstanding composer of trova songs, and his best have been sung and recorded many times. Garay was also musically illiterate – in fact, he only taught himself the alphabet at 16 – but in his case not only were scores recorded by others, but there are recordings. Garay settled in Havana in 1906, and in 1926 joined Rita Montaner and others to visit Paris, spending three months there. He broadcast on radio, made recordings and survived into modern times. He used to say "Not many men have shaken hands with both José Martí and Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
!"p298
Chicho Ibáñez, José 'Chicho' Ibáñez (1875–1981) was even longer-lived than Garay. Ibáñez was the first trovador to specialize in the Son Cubano, son; he also sang guaguancó
Guaguancó () is a subgenre of Cuban rumba, combining percussion, voices, and dance. There are two main styles: Havana and Matanzas.
Percussion
* battery of three conga drummers: the ''tumba'' (lowest), ''tres dos'' (middle, playing a counter-cl ...
s and pieces from the abakuá.
The composer Rosendo Ruiz (1885–1983) was another long-lived trovador. He was the author of a well-known guitar manual. Alberto Villalón (1882–1955), and Manuel Corona (1880–1950) were of similar stature. Garay, Ruiz, Villalón and Corona are known as ''the four greats of the trova'', though the following trovadores are also highly regarded.
Patricio Ballagas (1879–1920); María Teresa Vera
María Teresa Vera (February 6, 1895 in Guanajay – December 17, 1965 in Havana) was a Cuban singer, guitarist and composer. She was an outstanding example of the Cuban trova movement.
Career
She started her career as a singer in 1911 in a the ...
(1895–1965), Lorenzo Hierrezuelo (1907–1993), Ñico Saquito (Antonio Fernandez: 1901–1982), Carlos Puebla (1917–1989) and Compay Segundo (Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz: 1907–2003) were all great trova musicians. El Guayabero (Faustino Oramas: 1911–2007) was the last of the old trova.
Trova musicians often worked in pairs and trios, some of them exclusively so (Compay Segundo). As the sexteto/septeto/conjunto genre grew many of them joined in the larger groups. And let's not forget the Trio Matamoros, who worked together for most of their lives. Matamoros was one of the greats.
Bolero
This is a song and dance form quite different from its Spanish namesake. It originated in the last quarter of the 19th century with the founder of the traditional trova, Pepe Sánchez (trova), Pepe Sánchez. He wrote the first bolero, ''Tristezas'', which is still sung today. The bolero has always been a staple part of the trova musician's repertoire.
Originally, there were two sections of 16 bars in 2/4 time separated by an instrumental section on the Spanish guitar called the ''pasacalle''. The bolero proved to be exceptionally adaptable, and led to many variants. Typical was the introduction of sychopation leading to the bolero-moruno, bolero-beguine, bolero-mambo, bolero-cha. The bolero-son became for several decades the most popular rhythm for dancing in Cuba, and it was this rhythm that the international dance community picked up and taught as the wrongly-named 'rumba'.
The Cuban bolero was exported all over the world, and is still popular. Leading composers of the bolero were Sindo Garay, Rosendo Ruiz, Carlos Puebla, and Agustín Lara (Mexico).
Canción
''Canción'' means 'song' in Spanish. It is a popular genre of Latin American music, particularly in Cuba, where many of the compositions originate. Its roots lie in Spanish, French and Italian popular song forms. Originally highly stylized, with "intricate melodies and dark, enigmatic and elaborate lyrics" The canción was democratized by the trova movement in the latter part of the 19th century, when it became a vehicle for the aspirations and feelings of the population. Canción gradually fused with other forms of Cuban music, such as the bolero.
Tropical waltz
The waltz
The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position.
History
There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wa ...
(''El vals'') arrived in Cuba by 1814. It was the first dance in which couples were not linked by a communal sequence pattern. It was, and still is, danced in 3/4 time with the accent on the first beat. It was originally thought scandalous because couples faced each other, held each other in the 'closed' hold, and, so to speak, ignored the surrounding community. The waltz entered all countries in the Americas; its relative popularity in 19th-century Cuba is hard to estimate.
Indigenous Cuban dances did not use the closed hold with couples dancing independently until the danzón later in the century, though the guaracha
The guaracha () is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical thea ...
might be an earlier example. The waltz has another characteristic: it is a 'travelling' dance, with couples moving round the arena. In Latin dances, progressive movement of dancers is unusual, but does occur in the Conga (comparsa), conga, the samba and the tango (dance), tango.
The ''Tropical waltz'' was performed in a slower tempo and frequently included a sung melody with a text. Those texts usually referred to the beauties of the Cuban countryside, the longing of the Siboneyes (Cuban aboriginee) and other creole themes. With accents on its three beats, its melody was fluid and composed of equal value notes. It was similar to many other songs in which the melody was treated in a syllabic way, where the first beat was not stressed by a brief anacrusis but had a tendency to move toward the second beat like in the peasant (guajiro) song.
Son
Son cubano is a style of music and Dance in Cuba, dance that originated in Cuba and gained worldwide popularity during the 1930s. Son combines the structure and traits of the Music of Spain, Spanish canción with Afro-Cuban stylistic and percussion instruments elements. The Cuban Son is one of the most influential and widespread forms of Latin American music: its derivatives and fusions, especially salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
, have spread across the world.
The Son, said Cristóbal Díaz, is the most important genre of Cuban music, and the least studied. It can fairly be said that son is to Cuba what the tango
Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...
is to Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, or the samba to Brazil. In addition, it is perhaps the most flexible of all forms of Latin-American music. Its great strength is its fusion between European and African musical traditions. Its most characteristic instruments are the Cuban instrument known as the ''Tres (musical instrument), tres'', and the well-known double-headed bongó; these are present from the start to the present day. Also typical are the claves
Claves (; ) are a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of short, wooden sticks about 20–25 centimeters (8–10 inches) long and about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in diameter. Although traditionally made of wood (typically rosewood, ebony o ...
, the Spanish guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
, the double bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...
(replacing the early botija
The botija (botijuela; bunga) is a Caribbean musical instrument of the aerophone type. The botija is a potbellied earthenware jug or jar with two openings and was used in the early son sextetos in Cuba as a bass instrument.
Origin
The botija wa ...
or marímbula
The marímbula () is a plucked box musical instrument of the Caribbean. In Cuba it is common in the changüí genre, as well as old styles of son. In Mexico, where it is known as marimbol is played in son jarocho; in the Dominican Republic, w ...
), early on the cornet or trumpet and finally the piano.
In spite of a traditional tendency to attribute the origin of Cuban Son to the Eastern region of Cuba (Oriente), most recently, some musicologists have shown a more inclusive stance. Although Alejo Carpentier, Emilio Grenet and Cristóbal Díaz Ayala support the "Eastern origin" theory, Argeliers León doesn't mention anything about it in his pivotal work "Del Canto y el Tiempo", as well as María Teresa Linares in "The Music between Cuba and Spain." Ramadamés Giro states about this subject: "If Son was an artistic phenomenon that was developing since the second half of the 19th century – and not just in the old Oriente (Eastern) province -, it is logical to suppose, but not to affirm, that long before 1909 it was heard in the Capital City (Havana) because of the aforementioned reasons."
It was in Havana where the encounter of the rural rumba and the urban rumba, that had been developing separately during the second half of the 19th century, took place. The guaracheros and rumberos that used to play with the Tiple and the Guiro finally met other Rumberos that sang and danced accompanied by the wooden box (cajón) and the Cuban Clave, and the result was the fusion of both styles in a new genre called Son. Around 1910 the Son most likely adopted the clave rhythm from the Havana-based cuban rumba, rumba, which had been developed in the late 19th century in Havana and Matanzas
Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...
.
The mass popularization of Son music led to an increased valorization of Afro-Cuban street culture and of the artists who created it. It also opened the door for other music genres with Afro-Cuban roots to become popular in Cuba and throughout the world.[Moore, R. "Afrocubanismo and Son." ''The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics.'' Ed. Chomsky, Carr, and Smorkaloff. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 198. Print.]
Cuban jazz
The history of jazz in Cuba was obscured for many years, but it has become clear that its history in Cuba is virtually as long as its history in the US.[Giro Radamés 2007. ''Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba''. La Habana. Extensive essay on Cuban jazz in vol 2, p261–269.][Roberts, John Storm 1979. ''The Latin tinge: the influence of Latin American music on the United States''. Oxford.][Roberts, John Storm 1999. ''Latin jazz: the first of the fusions, 1880s to today''. Schirmer, N.Y.][Isabelle Leymarie 2002. ''Cuban fire: the story of salsa and Latin jazz''. Continuum, London.][Schuller, Gunther 1986. ''Early jazz: its roots and musical development''. Oxford, N.Y.]
Much more is now known about Early Cuban bands#Early Cuban jazz bands, early Cuban jazz bands, but a full assessment is plagued by the lack of recordings. Migrations and visits to and from the US and the mutual exchange of recordings and sheet music kept musicians in the two countries in touch. In the first part of the 20th century, there were close relations between musicians in Cuba and those in . The orchestra leader in the famous Tropicana Club, Armando Romeu Jr, was a leading figure in the post-World War II development of Cuban jazz. The phenomenon of cubop and the jam sessions in Havana and New York organized by Cachao created genuine fusions that influence musicians today.
A key historian of early Cuban jazz is Leonardo Acosta. Others have explored the history of jazz and Latin jazz more from the U.S. perspective.
Early Cuban jazz bands
The Jazz Band Sagua was founded in Sagua la Grande in 1914 by Pedro Stacholy (director & piano). Members: Hipólito Herrera (trumpet); Norberto Fabelo (cornet); Ernesto Ribalta (flute & sax); Humberto Domínguez (violin); Luciano Galindo (trombone); Antonio Temprano (tuba); Tomás Medina (drum kit); Marino Rojo (güiro). For fourteen years they played at the ''Teatro Principal de Sagua''. Stacholy studied under Antonio Fabré in Sagua, and completed his studies in New York, where he stayed for three years.[Giro Radamés 2007. ''Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba''. La Habana. vol 2, p. 261.]
The Cuban Jazz Band was founded in 1922 by Jaime Prats in Havana. The personnel included his son Rodrigo Prats
Rodrigo Prats (February 7, 1909 – September 15, 1980) was a Cuban composer, arranger, violinist, pianist and orchestral director.
Biography
The son of a musician, Jaime Prats, Rodrigo began to study music at the age of nine. He studied ...
on violin, the great flautist Alberto Socarrás on flute and saxophone and Pucho Jiménez on slide trombone. The line-up would probably have included double bass, kit drum, banjo, cornet at least. Earlier works cited this as the first jazz band in Cuba, but evidently there were earlier groups.
In 1924 Moisés Simons (piano) founded a group which played on the roof garden of the Plaza Hotel in Havana, and consisted of piano, violin, two saxes, banjo, double bass, drums and timbales. Its members included Virgilio Diago (violin); Alberto Soccarás (alto saz, flute); José Ramón Betancourt (tenor sax); Pablo O'Farrill (d. bass). In 1928, still at the same venue, Simons hired Julio Cueva, a famous trumpeter, and Enrique Santiesteban, a future media star, as vocalist and drummer. These were top instrumentalists, attracted by top fees of $8 a day.p28
During the 1930s, several bands played Jazz in Havana, such as those of Armando Romeu, Isidro Pérez, Chico O'Farrill and Germán Lebatard. Their most important contribution was its own instrumental format itself, which introduced the typical Jazz sonority to the Cuban audience. Another important element within this process were the arrangements of Cuban musicians such as Romeu, O'Farrill, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín Jústiz and Leopoldo "Pucho" Escalante.
Afro-Cuban jazz
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz and mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz first emerged in the early 1940s, with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, based in New York City. In 1947 the collaborations of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, most notably the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as Dizzy's and Pozo's "Manteca" and Charlie Parker's and Machito's "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop", short for Cuban bebop. During its first decades, the Afro-Cuban jazz movement was stronger in the United States than in Cuba itself. In the early 1970s, the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna and later Irakere brought Afro-Cuban jazz into the Cuban music scene, influencing new styles such as songo.
Diversification and popularization
Cuban music enters the United States
In 1930, Don Azpiazú had the first million-selling record of Cuban music: ''The Peanut Vendor
"El manisero", known in English as "The Peanut Vendor", is a Cuban son-pregón composed by Moisés Simons. Together with "Guantanamera", it is arguably the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician. "The Peanut Vendor" has been recorde ...
'' (El Manisero), with Antonio Machín as the singer. This number had been orchestrated and included in N.Y. theatre by Azpiazú before recording, which no doubt helped with the publicity. The Lecuona Cuban Boys The Lecuona Cuban Boys was a popular Cuban orchestra which toured the world for over forty years.
The band was founded by Ernesto Lecuona, whose role was that of a patron-entrepreneur. He did not actually play with the band, but sometimes gave a pi ...
became the best-known Cuban touring ensemble: they were the ones who first used the conga drum in their conjunto, and popularized the conga (dance), conga as a dance. Xavier Cugat at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Waldorf Astoria was highly influential. In 1941 Desi Arnaz popularized the comparsa
A comparsa is a group of singers, musicians and dancers that take part in carnivals and other festivities in Spain and Latin America. Its precise meaning depends on the specific regional celebration. The most famous comparsas are those that parti ...
drum (similar to the conga) in the U.S with his performances of Babalu (song), Babalú. There was a real 'rumba craze' at the time. Later, Mario Bauza and Machito set up in New York and Miguelito Valdés also arrived there.
1940s and '50s
In the 1940s, Chano Pozo formed part of the bebop revolution in jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, playing conga with Dizzy Gillespie and Machito in New York City. Cuban jazz had started much earlier, in Havana, in the period 1910–1930.
Arsenio Rodríguez, one of Cuba's most famous tres players and conjunto leaders, emphasised the ''son'' African roots by adapting the ''guaguancó
Guaguancó () is a subgenre of Cuban rumba, combining percussion, voices, and dance. There are two main styles: Havana and Matanzas.
Percussion
* battery of three conga drummers: the ''tumba'' (lowest), ''tres dos'' (middle, playing a counter-cl ...
'' style, and by adding a cowbell (instrument), cowbell and conga to the rhythm section. He also expanded the role of the tres as a solo instrument.
In the late 1930s and 40s, the danzonera Arcaño y sus Maravillas incorporated more syncopation and added a montuno (as in son), transforming the music played by Charanga (Cuba), charanga orchestras.
The big band era
The big band era arrived in Cuba in the 1940s, and became a dominant format that survives. Two great arranger-bandleaders deserve special credit for this, Armando Romeu Jr. and Damaso Perez Prado. Armando Romeu Jr. led the ''Tropicana Club, Tropicana Cabaret'' orchestra for 25 years, starting in 1941. He had experience playing with visiting American jazz groups as well as a complete mastery of Cuban forms of music. In his hands the Tropicana presented not only Afrocuban and other popular Cuban music, but also Cuban jazz and American big band compositions. Later he conducted the ''Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna''.[Acosta, Leonardo 2003. ''Cubano be, cubano bop: one hundred years of jazz in Cuba''. Transl. Daniel S. Whitesell. Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.]
Damaso Perez Prado had a number of hits, and sold more 78s than any other Latin music of the day. He took over the role of pianist/arranger for the Orquesta ''Casino de la Playa'' in 1944, and immediately began introducing new elements into its sound. The orchestra began to sound more Afrocuban, and at the same time Prado took influences from Stravinsky, Stan Kenton and elsewhere. By the time he left the orchestra in 1946 he had put together the elements of his big band mambo.: "Above all, we must point out the work of Perez Prado as an arranger, or better yet, composer and arranger, and his clear influence on most other Cuban arrangers from then on."p86
Benny Moré, considered by many as the greatest Cuban singer of all time, was in his heyday in the 1950s. He had an innate musicality and fluid tenor voice, which he colored and phrased with great expressivity. Although he could not read music, Moré was a master of all the genres, including son montuno, mambo, guaracha, guajira, cha cha cha, afro, canción, guaguancó, and bolero. His orchestra, the Banda Gigante, and his music, was a development – more flexible and fluid in style – of the Perez Prado orchestra, which he sang with in 1949–1950.
Cuban music in the US
Three great innovations based on Cuban music hit the US after World War II: the first was Cubop, the latest latin jazz fusion. In this, Mario Bauza and the Machito orchestra on the Cuban side and Dizzy Gillespie on the American side were prime movers. The rumbustious conguero Chano Pozo was also important, for he introduced jazz musicians to basic Cuban rhythms. Cuban jazz has continued to be a significant influence.
The mambo first entered the United States around 1950, though ideas had been developing in Cuba and Mexico City for some time. The mambo as understood in the United States and Europe was considerably different from the danzón-mambo of Orestes "Cachao" Lopez, which was a danzon with extra syncopation in its final part. The mambo—which became internationally famous—was a big band product, the work of Perez Prado, who made some sensational recordings for RCA in their new recording studios in Mexico City in the late 1940s. About 27 of those recordings had Benny Moré as the singer, though the best sellers were mainly instrumentals. The big hits included "Que rico el mambo" (Mambo Jambo); "Mambo No. 5"; "Mambo #8"; "Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)". The later (1955) hit "Patricia (1955 song), Patricia" was a mambo/rock fusion. Mambo of the Prado kind was more a descendant of the son and the guaracha than the danzón. In the U.S. the mambo craze lasted from about 1950 to 1956, but its influence on the bugaloo and salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
that followed it was considerable.
Violinist Enrique Jorrín invented the chachachá in the early 1950s. This was developed from the danzón by increased syncopation. The chachachá became more popular outside Cuba when the big bands of Perez Prado and Tito Puente produced arrangements that attracted American and European audiences.
Along with "Nuyoricans" Ray Barretto and Tito Puente and others, several waves of Cuban immigrants introduced their ideas into US music. Among these was Celia Cruz, a guaracha
The guaracha () is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical thea ...
singer. Others were active in Latin jazz, such as percussionist Carlos "Patato" Valdes, Patato Valdés of the Cuban-oriented "Tipíca '73", linked to the Fania Records, Fania All-Stars. Several former members of Irakere have also become highly successful in the US, among them Paquito D'Rivera and Arturo Sandoval. Tata Güines, a famous conguero, moved to New York City in 1957, playing with jazz players such as Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson, and Miles Davis at Birdland (jazz club), Birdland. As a percussionist, he performed with Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted Fran ...
and Frank Sinatra. He returned to Cuba in 1959 after Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
came to power in the Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
, which he helped fund with contributions from his earnings as a musician.
Mambo
Mambo (music), Mambo is a musical genre and dance style that developed originally in Cuba. The word "Mambo", similarly to other afroamerican musical denominations as conga, milonga, bomba, tumba, samba, bamba, bamboula, tambo, tango, cumbé, cumbia and candombe, denote an African origin, particularly from Congo, due to the presence of certain characteristic combinations of sounds, such as mb, ng and nd, which belong to the Niger-Congo linguistic complex.
The earliest roots of the Cuban Mambo can be traced to the "Danzón de Nuevo Ritmo" (Danzón with a new rhythm) made popular by the orchestra "Arcaño y sus Maravillas" conducted by famous bandleader Antonio Arcaño. He was the first to denominate a section of the popular Cuban Danzón
Danzón is the official musical genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring se ...
as a "Mambo." It was Arcaño's cellist, Orestes López, who created the first Danzón called "Mambo" (1938). In this piece, some syncopated motives, taken from the Son
A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative.
Social issues
In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...
style, were combined with improvised flute passages.
Pianist and arranger from Matanzas, Cuba, Dámaso Pérez Prado (1927) established his residence in Havana at the beginning of the 1940s and began to work at night clubs and orchestras, such as Paulina Alvarez's and Casino de La Playa. In 1949 he traveled to Mexico looking for job opportunities and achieved great success with a new style, to which he assigns a name that had been already utilized by Antonio Arcaño, the "Mambo."
Perez Prado's style differed from the previous "Mambo" concept. The new style possessed a greater influence from the North-American Jazz band music, and an expanded instrumentation consisting of four or five trumpets, four of five saxophones, double bass, drum set, maracas, cowbell, congas and bongoes. The new "Mambo" included a catchy counterpoint between the trumpets and the saxophones, that impulsed the body to move along with the rhythm, stimulated at the end of each musical phrase by a characteristic deep throat sound expression.
Prado's recordings were meant for the Latin American and U.S. Latino markets, but some of his most celebrated mambos, such as "Mambo No. 5" and "Que Rico el Mambo", quickly crossed over to the United States.[León, Javier F. "Mambo." ''Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture''. Ed. Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo J. Aldama, Peter J. García, Alma Alvarez-Smith. 2 vols. Connecticut: Praeger, 2004: 510]
Chachachá
Chachachá is a genre of Cuban music. It has been a popular dance music which developed from the Danzón-mambo in the early 1950s, and became widely popular throughout the entire world.
Chachachávis a Cuban music genre whose creation has been traditionally attributed to Cuban composer and violinist Enrique Jorrín, which began his career playing for the Charanga (Cuba), charanga band Orquesta América.
According to the testimony of Enrique Jorrín, he composed some "Danzones" in which the musician of the orchestra had to sing short refrains, and this style was very successful. In the Danzón "Constancia" he introduced some montunos and the audience was motivated to join in singing the refrains. Jorrín also asked the members of the orchestra to sing in unison so the lyrics may be heard more clearly and achieve a greater impact in the audience. That way of singing also helped to mask the poor singing skills of the orchestra members.
Since its inception, Chachachá music had a close relationship with the dancer's steps. The well-known name Chachachá came into being with the help of the dancers at the Silver Star Club in Havana. When the dance was coupled to the rhythm of the music, it became evident that the dancer's feet were making a peculiar sound as they grazed the floor on three successive beats. It was like an onomatopoeia that sounded as: Chachachá. From this peculiar sound, a music genre was born which motivated people from around the world to dance at its catchy rhythm.
According to Olavo ALén: "During the 1950s, Chachachá maintained its popularity thanks to the efforts of many Cuban composers who were familiar with the technique of composing ''Danzón, danzones'' and who unleashed their creativity on the Chachachá", such as Rosendo Ruiz, Jr. ("Los Marcianos" and "Rico Vacilón"), Félix Reina ("Dime Chinita," "Como Bailan Cha-cha-chá los Mexicanos"), Richard Egűes ("El Bodeguero" and "La Cantina") and Rafael Lay ("Cero Codazos, Cero Cabezazos").
The Chachachá was first presented to the public through the instrumental medium of the ''Charanga (Cuba), charanga,'' a typical Cuban dance band format made up of a flute, strings, piano, bass and percussion. The popularity of the Chachachá also revived the popularity of this kind of orchestra.
Filin
Filin was a Cuban fashion of the 1940s and 1950s, influenced by popular music in the US. The word is derived from ''feeling''. It describes a style of post-microphone jazz-influenced romantic song (crooning). Its Cuban roots were in the bolero and the canción. Some Cuban quartets, such as Cuarteto d'Aida and Los Zafiros, modelled themselves on U.S. close-harmony groups. Others were singers who had heard Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole. A house in Havana, where the trovador Tirso Díaz lived, became a meeting-place for singers and musicians interested in filin such as: Luis Yañez, César Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez, Niño Rivera, José Antonio Ñico Rojas, Elena Burke, Froilán, Aida Diestro and Frank Emilio Flynn. Here lyricists and singers could meet arrangers, such as Bebo Valdés, El Niño Rivera (Andrés Hechavarria), Peruchín (Pedro Justiz), and get help to develop their work. Filin singers included César Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez, who spent a decade in Mexico from 1949 to 1959, Frank Domínguez, the blind pianist Frank Emilio Flynn, and the great singers of boleros Elena Burke and the still-performing Omara Portuondo, who both came from the Cuarteto d'Aida. The filin movement originally had a place every afternoon on ''Radio Mil Diez''. Some of its most prominent singers, such as Pablo Milanés, took up the banner of the Nueva Trova at a later time.
1960s and 70s
Modern Cuban music is known for its relentless mixing of musical genres, genres. For example, the 1970s saw Los Irakere use batá in a big band setting; this became known as son-batá or batá-rock. Later artists created the mozambique (music), mozambique, which mixed conga and Mambo (music), mambo, and batá-rumba, which mixed rumba and batá drum music. Mixtures including elements of hip hop music, hip hop, jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and rock and roll are also common, like in Habana Abierta's rockoson.
Revolutionary Cuba and Cuban exiles
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
in 1959 signalled the emigration of many musicians to Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
, Florida and New York (state), New York, and in Cuba artists and their work came under the protection (and control) of the Socialist state, and the monopoly state-owned recording company EGREM. The Castro government abolished copyright laws in Cuba, closed many of the venues where popular music used to be played (e.g. night clubs), and so indirectly threw many musicians out of work.p202 This undoubtedly had deleterious effects on the evolution of popular music and dance.[Juan Formell in Padura Fuentes, Leonardo 2003. ''Faces of salsa: a spoken history of the music''. Translated by Stephen J. Clark. Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. p. 69]
Many young musicians now studied classical music and not popular music. All musicians employed by the state were given academic courses in music. In Cuba, the Nueva Trova movement (including Pablo Milanés) reflected the new leftist ideals. The state took over the lucrative Tropicana Club, which continued as a popular attraction for foreign tourists until 1968, when it was closed along with many other music venues (and later reopened with the rebirth of tourism). p202 Tourism was almost non-existent for three decades. Traditional Cuban music could be found in local Casas de la Trova. Musicians, if in work, were full-time and paid by the state after graduating from a conservatory. The collapse of the USSR in 1991, and the loss of its support for Cuba changed the situation quite a bit. Tourism became respectable again, and so did popular music for their entertainment. Musicians were even allowed to tour abroad and earn a living outside the state-run system.
Famous artists from the Cuban exile include Celia Cruz and the whole conjunto she sang with, the Sonora Matancera. 'Patato' (Carlos "Patato" Valdes, Carlos Valdes), Cachao López, Cachao, La Lupe, Arturo Sandoval, Willy Chirino, Hansel y Raul, La Palabra (musician), La Palabra, Paquito D'Rivera, Bebo Valdés and Gloria Estefan are some others. Many of these musicians, especially Cruz, became closely associated with the anti-revolutionary movement, and as 'unpersons' have been omitted from the standard Cuban reference books, and their subsequent musical recordings are never on sale in Cuba.
Salsa
Salsa was the fourth innovation based on Cuban music to hit the US, and differed in that it was initially developed in the US, not in Cuba. Because Cuba has so many indigenous types of music there has always been a problem in marketing the 'product' abroad to people who did not understand the differences between rhythms that, to a Cuban, are quite distinct. So, twice in the 20th century, a kind of product label was developed to solve this problem. The first occasion was in the 1930s after "The Peanut Vendor
"El manisero", known in English as "The Peanut Vendor", is a Cuban son-pregón composed by Moisés Simons. Together with "Guantanamera", it is arguably the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician. "The Peanut Vendor" has been recorde ...
" became an international success. It was called a 'rumba' even though it really had nothing to do with genuine rumba: the number was obviously a son
A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative.
Social issues
In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...
pregon. The label 'rumba' was used outside Cuba for years as a catch-all for Cuban popular music.
The second occasion happened during the period 1965–1975 in New York City, as musicians of Cuban and Puerto-Rican origin combined to produce the great music of the post Cha-cha-cha period. This music acquired the label of 'salsa'. No-one really knows how this happened, but everyone recognised what a benefit it was to have a common label for son, Mambo (music), mambo, guaracha, guajira, guaguancó, etc. Cubans and non Cubans, such as Tito Puente, Rubén Blades and many experts of the Cuban music and salsa have always said "Salsa is just another name for Cuban, music. Tito Puentes once said, now they call it Salsa, later they may call it Stir Fry, but to me it will alway be Cuban Music"; but over time salsa bands worked in other influences. For example, in the late 1960s Willie Colón developed numbers that made use of Brazilian rhythms. New York radio programmes offered 'salsarengue' as a further combination. You look at a band of the 1940s playing Cuban music and you will see the same exact instruments in Salsa Music. Later still 'Salsa romantica' was the label for an especially sugary type of bolero
Bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It has ...
. Even when, Benny Moré, Perez Prado the greatest Sonero that ever existed, was singing Boleros with a salsa cadence in the 1940s. It was not until the 1950s that Cuban music became popular for Puerto Rican bands. Plena, Bomba and other styles or music were popular at the time in Puerto Rico. Many famous Puerto Rican musicians went to learn the music styles of Cubans in the 1930s and 1940s, and it was not until the arrival of Castro in 1959 and the Cuban music stopped its exportation to the world, that Puerto Ricans in New York were able to be greatly noticed, but what is known as Salsa today, was brought to New York in the 1920s and 1930s by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, this last one was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie as he was one of the greatest percussionist that ever lived.
The question of whether or not salsa is anything more than Cuban music has been argued over for more than thirty years. Initially, not much difference could be seen. Later it became clear that not only was New York salsa different from popular music in Cuba, but salsa in Venezuela, Colombia and other countries could also be distinguished. It also seems clear that salsa has receded from the great position it achieved in the late 1970s. The reasons for this are also much disputed.
Nueva Trova
Paralleling nueva canción in Latin America is the Cuban Nueva trova
Nueva Trova (, "new trova") is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes.
Nueva Trova has its roots in the traditional trova, but differs from it beca ...
, which dates from about 1967/68, after the Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
. It differed from the traditional trova, not because the musicians were younger, but because the content was, in the widest sense, political. Nueva trova is defined by its connection with Fidel Castro, Castro's revolution, and by its lyrics, which attempt to escape the banalities of life by concentrating on socialism, injustice, sexism, colonialism, racism and similar issues. Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés became the most important exponents of this style. Carlos Puebla and Joseíto Fernández were long-time old trova singers who added their weight to the new regime, but of the two only Puebla wrote special pro-revolution songs.
Nueva trova had its heyday in the 1970s, but was already declining before the fall of the Soviet Union. Examples of non-political styles in the nueva trova movement can be found, for example, Liuba María Hevia whose lyrics are focused on more traditional subjects such as love and solitude, sharing with the rest a highly poetical style. On the other side of the spectrum, Carlos Varela (singer-songwriter), Carlos Varela is famous in Cuba for his open criticism of some aspects of Castro's revolution.
The nueva trova, initially so popular, suffered both inside Cuba, perhaps from a growing disenchantment with one-party rule, and externally, from the vivid contrast with the Buena Vista Social Club film and recordings. Audiences round the world have had their eyes opened to the extraordinary charm and musical quality of the older forms of Cuban music. By contrast, topical themes that seemed so relevant in the 1960s and 1970s now seem dry and passé. Even "Guantanamera" has been damaged by over-repetition in less skilled hands. All the same, those pieces of high musical and lyrical quality, among which Puebla's "Hasta siempre, Hasta siempre, Comandante" stands out, will probably last as long as Cuba lasts.
1980s to the present
Son remains the basis of most popular forms of modern Cuban music. Son is represented by long-standing groups like Septeto Nacional, which was re-established in 1985, Orquesta Aragón, Orquesta Ritmo Oriental and Orquesta Original de Manzanillo. Sierra Maestra, is famous for having sparked a revival in traditional son in the 1980s. Nueva trova
Nueva Trova (, "new trova") is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes.
Nueva Trova has its roots in the traditional trova, but differs from it beca ...
still has influence, but the overtly political themes of the 1960s are well out of fashion. Meanwhile, Irakere fused traditional Cuban music with jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, and groups like NG La Banda, Orishas (band), Orishas and Son 14 continued to add new elements to son, especially hip hop music, hip hop and funk, to form timba
Timba is a Cuban genre of music based on Cuban ''son'' with ''salsa'', American
Funk/R&B and the strong influence of Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Timba rhythm sections differ from their salsa counterparts, because timba emphasizes the bass dru ...
music; this process was aided by the acquisition of imported electronic equipment. There are still many practitioners of traditional ''son montuno'', such as Eliades Ochoa, who have recorded and toured widely as a result of interest in the ''son montuno'' after the Buena Vista Social Club success. Europe-based Cuban female singer-songwriter Addys Mercedes merged her roots of Son and Filin with elements of urban, rock and pop-music, reaching mainstream airplay charts in Germany.
In the 1990s, increased interest in world music coincided with the post-Soviet Union ''periodo especial'' in Cuba, during which the economy began opening up to tourism. Orquesta Aragón, Charanga Habanera and Cándido Fabré y su Banda have been long-time players in the charanga scene, and helped form the popular timba
Timba is a Cuban genre of music based on Cuban ''son'' with ''salsa'', American
Funk/R&B and the strong influence of Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Timba rhythm sections differ from their salsa counterparts, because timba emphasizes the bass dru ...
scene of the late 1990s. The biggest award in modern Cuban music is the Beny Moré Award.
Timba
Cubans have never been content to hear their music described as ''salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
'', even though it is crystal clear that this ''was'' a label for their music. Since the early 1990s Timba has been used to describe popular dance music in Cuba, rivaled only lately by Reggaetón. Though derived from the same roots as salsa, Timba has its own characteristics, and is intimately tied to the life and culture of Cuba, and especially Havana.
As opposed to salsa, whose roots are strictly from Son
A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative.
Social issues
In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...
and the Cuban ''conjunto
The term ''conjunto'' (, literally 'group', 'ensemble') refers to several types of small musical ensembles present in different Latin American musical traditions, mainly in Mexico and Cuba. While Mexican conjuntos play styles such as '' norteño' ...
'' bands of the 1940s and 1950s, Timba represents a synthesis of many folkloric (Cuban rumba, rumba, guaguancó
Guaguancó () is a subgenre of Cuban rumba, combining percussion, voices, and dance. There are two main styles: Havana and Matanzas.
Percussion
* battery of three conga drummers: the ''tumba'' (lowest), ''tres dos'' (middle, playing a counter-cl ...
, batá drumming and the sacred songs of santería.[Cuban Music from A to Z, by Helio Orovio, p210 (Duke University Press, Durham 2004)]), and popular sources (even taking inspiration from non Afro Cuban musical genres such as rock music, rock, jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and funk). According to Vincenzo Perna, author of ''Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis'', timba needs to be spoken of because of its musical, cultural, social, and political reasons; its sheer popularity in Cuba, its novelty and originality as a musical style, the skill of its practitioners, its relationship with both local traditions and the culture of the black Diaspora, its meanings, and the way its style brings to light the tension points within society.[West-Duran, Alan. "A Resonant Rum for the Ears: Afro-Cuban Music." Journal of Popular Music Studies 20.1 (2008): 79-91.] In addition to timbales
Timbales () or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size.Orovio, Helio 1981. ''Diccionario de la música cubana: biográfico ...
, timba drummers make use of the drum-set, further distinguishing the sound from that of mainland salsa. The use of synthesised keyboard is also common. Timba songs tend to sound more innovative, experimental and frequently more virtuosic than salsa pieces; horn parts are usually fast, at times even bebop influenced, and stretch to the extreme ranges of all instruments. Bass and percussion patterns are similarly unconventional. Improvisation is commonplace.
Revival projects
Several projects gained international attention in the 1990s due to their revival of traditional music styles such as the son cubano of the septeto and the conjunto era. Founded in 1976, Sierra Maestra (band) was one of the first revivalist groups in Cuba. In 1995, Juan de Marcos González, director and Tres (instrument), tres player of Sierra Maestra, was contacted by Nick Gold (head of World Circuit (record label), World Circuit Records) to record a traditional Cuban album featuring African musicians. In the end, the African musicians could not make it to Havana, so the project became a 100% Cuban affair featuring veteran Cuban musicians such as Rubén González (pianist), Rubén González, Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo and Omara Portuondo. It spawned two bands, both of which involved American guitarist Ry Cooder: Afro-Cuban All Stars and Buena Vista Social Club. Both bands recorded their debut albums, ''A Toda Cuba le Gusta'' and ''Buena Vista Social Club (album), Buena Vista Social Club'', respectively, in March 1996. The release of the latter in September 1997 was a true watershed event. The album became a worldwide hit, selling millions of copies and turning established musicians into globally renowned figures.
''Buena Vista'' resulted in several follow-up recordings and spawned a Buena Vista Social Club (film), film of the same name, as well as tremendous interest in other Cuban groups. In subsequent years, dozens of singers and ''conjuntos'' made recordings for foreign labels and toured internationally.
The conclusion some have drawn is that the wholesale closure of popular music venues (after the revolution), which threw many musicians out of work, and subsequent control by state committees, damaged the development of Cuban popular music.
Hip hop
Hip hop music, Hip hop grew steadily more popular in Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s through Cuba's Special Period. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy went into decline. Poverty became more widespread and visible in Cuba. In the 1990s, some Cubans started to protest this situation by means of rap and hip-hop. During this period of economic crisis, which the country's poor and black populations especially hard, hip hop became a way for the country's Afro-descended population to embrace their blackness and articulate a demand for racial equality for black people in Cuba. The idea of blackness and black liberation was not always compatible with the goals of the Cuban government, which was still operating under the idea that a raceless society was the correct realization of the Cuban Revolution. When hip-hop emerged, the Cuban government opposed the vulgar image that rappers portrayed, but later accepted that it might be better to have hip-hop under the influence of the Ministry of Culture as an authentic expression of Cuban Culture.[
] Rap music in Cuba is heavily influenced by the country's pre-existing musical traditions, such as salsa and rumba.
In some ways, hip hop is tolerated by the government of Cuba and performers are provided with venues and equipment by the government. The Cuban rap and hip-hop scene sought out the involvement of the Ministry of Culture in the production and promotion of their music, which would otherwise have been impossible to accomplish. After the Cuban government provided lukewarm endorsement, the Cuban Rap Agency provided the Cuban rap scene, in 2002, with a state-sponsored record label, magazine, and Cuba's own hip-hop festival.
The government gives rap and hip-hop groups time on mass media outlets in return for hip-hop artists limiting self-expression and presenting the government in a positive way. Rappers who explicitly speak about race or racism in Cuba are still under scrutiny by the government. The government recognizes that hip-hop is growing in Cuba, and would be difficult to eliminate.
Cubatón
Like Spanish reggae from Panama is a new genre for the Cubans but by 2012 was so massively popular that "the face of Cuban pop music" was considered to be Cuban reggae (cubatón) singer, Osmani García "La Voz".["Considerado actualmente como el exponente más popular de Cuba" i]
"Osmani García "La Voz" llega el lunes a Miami", ''La Nación Dominicana'', March 23, 2012
/ref> The advent of web software helped to distribute music unofficially. Both lyrics and dance movements have been criticised. Reggaeton musicians such as responded by making songs that defended their music. Despite their efforts, the Ministry of Culture has ruled that reggaeton is not to be used in teaching institutions, parties and at discos, and in 2011 restricted its airplay after massive popularity of García's "Chupi Chupi", which referred to oral sex. Other popular cubatón artists include Eddy K and Gente de Zona ("People from the 'Hood").
Rock music in Cuba
The musical interaction between Cuba and the US is ancient. Already in the 18th century, during the Spanish rule of Louisiana (1763–1803), the Havanese orchestras and bands offered concerts in New Orleans and in the 19th century the Cuan contradanza was very popular in the US. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first jazz bands were created in Cuba, in the style of the American groups. The "Sagua" Jaz Band was founded in Sagua la Grande in 1914 by Pedro Stacholy (conductor and pianist). The group played during 14 years at the Teatro Principal de Sagua.
The strong influence of the American music on the Cuban younger generations gave way to the beginning of the soloists and groups of rock and roll in Cuba during the 1950s. Many Cuban artists sang versions of American songs translated to Spanish, as it was also happening in Mexico.
The launching of the group Los LLopis represented the entrance in a new stage for the Cuban music, that of the generation and amplification of the sound by electroacoustic devices; because in the sound composition of this group one can observe a novel element of great importance, the inclusion of an electric guitar.
In 1961, other artists emerged such as Dany Puga, called the King of Twist, and bands such as Los Satélites, Los Diablos Melódicos and Los Enfermos del Rock, as well as Los Halcones and Los Huracanes from Marianao.
The vocal quartet Los Zafiros was another successful group from the beginning of the sixties. Founded in 1961, it was influenced by the doo-wop style of The Platters, The Diamonds and other American groups, and counted on a repertoire consisting of ballads, calypsos and bossanovas, as well as songs with a slow rock ad bolero rhythms.
At that time, the popular group Los Astros, led by the singer and guitarist Raúl Gómez, was threatened by pressures exerted by the Fidel Castro regime over the rock groups, which were considered as a form of "ideological diversionism" and actively opposed in all its manifesations. Its style, strongly influenced by the British Invasion groups, as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, was labelled as "deviant" and consequently repressed without any hesitation. Since then, the Revolutionary government of Cuba began to implement an absolute control over all aspects of the Cuban society, including, of course, all cultural expressions.
Around 1965, the Revolutionary government implemented a strategy to substitute the foreign products that the young people preferred, with others that better matched their official guidelines; and as a result of this strategy, a new radio program called Nocturno was broadcast in 1966, which initial musical theme was "La chica de la valija" (Girl with a suitcase) from the Italian sax player Fausto Papetti. The program presented modern songs, giving priority to the European repertoire in Spanish language of soloists and groups such as: Los Mustang, Los Bravos, Los Brincos, Juan y Junior, Rita Pavone, Massiel, Nino Bravo, Leonardo Fabio, Salvatore Adamo and Raphael, and some Cuban groups as Los Zafiros and Los Dan. The ban against rock music was lifted in 1966, but rock fans continued to be marginalized by the communist establishment, and watched over with suspicion as "counter-revolutionaries".
Actually, rock music began to be heard in Havana during the seventies, in a radio program from Radio Marianao called Buenas Tardes Juventud. That program presented groups such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Dave Clark Five, The Animals, Grand Funk, Rare Earth, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Neil Sedaka and Paul Anka. At the beginning of the eighties, that radio station joined Radio Ciudad de La Habana.
In 1979, a three-day music festival called Havana Jam took place at the Karl Marx Theater, in Havana, Cuba, where a group of rock artists that included Billy Joel and Stephen Stills performed.
In the 1980s, a Heavy metal music, heavy metal band called Venus was formed by Roberto Armada in Municipio Playa. They achieved much success and created a headbanger following among the Cuban youth. Punk rock was introduced in Cuba in the late 1980s and gained a cult-type following among a minority of the youth.
During the nineties, rock and roll in Cuba was still an underground phenomenon. In Havana, the "Ciudad de La Habana" radio station presented several programs showing the most recent tendencies on that type of music around the world. Juan Camacho, an old musician and radio host had a morning program called ''Disco Ciudad''. ''El Programa de Ramón'' was also a successful radio show. Some bands from that period were Gens, Zeus and Los Tarsons.
In 2001, the Welsh group Manic Street Preachers was invited to perform in Cuba, and Fidel Castro attended its concert along with other government authorities. In 2004, Castro gave a speech honoring the Birthday of John Lennon, whose music, as a member of The Beatles and as a soloist, was banned in Cuba for a very long time. A bronze statue of Lennon was placed in a Havanese well known park, and it became a notoriety because of becoming a victim of constant vandalism from passers by that frequently stole its bronze spectacles.
At the same time that the government was showing a more indulgent attitude toward the foreign rock groups, as part of an international campaign which purpose was to achieve an opening in the commercial transactions and investments of the US and Europe in Cuba, it continued to implement an inflexible repression against any form of internal dissidence. This was the case of the rocker Gorki Águila and his group Porno para Ricardo. In August 2008, Águila was arrested under charges of dangerousness, a law that allows the authorities to detain people whom they think are likely to commit crimes, even when they have not yet committed them.
More recently, Rick Wakeman, Sepultura and Audioslave performed in Havana, and The Rolling Stones offered a historic concert that has become the most outstanding rock event since the beginning of the Revolutionary period in 1959.
A new phenomenon occurred in 2013 when several Cuban underground metal bands begin to emigrate to the United States, creating a parallel scene with the bands Agonizer, Escape, Ancestor, Hipnosis, Suffering Tool and Chlover
References
Sources
The works below are reliable sources for all aspects of traditional Cuban popular music. Spanish titles indicate those that have not been translated into English.
* Acosta, Leonardo 1987. ''From the drum to the synthesiser''. Martí, Havana, Cuba. Articles written from 1976 to 1982.
* Acosta, Leonardo 2003. ''Cubano be, cubano bop: one hundred years of jazz in Cuba''. Transl. Daniel S. Whitesell. Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. Outstanding review by former conjunto trumpeter.
* Betancur Alvarez, Fabio 1993. ''Sin clave y bongó no hay son: música afrocubano y confluencias musicales de Colombia y Cuba''. Antioqia, Medellín, Colombia.
* Blanco, Jesús 1992. ''80 años del son y soneros en el Caribe''. Caracas.
* Brill, Mark. Music of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2nd Edition, 2018. Taylor & Francis
* Cabrera, Lydia 1958. ''La sociedád secreta Abakuá''. Colección del Chicerekú, La Habana.
* Calderon, Jorge 1983. ''Maria Teresa Vera''. La Habana.
* Calvo Ospina, Hernando 1995. ''Salsa! Havana heat, Bronx beat''. Latin American Bureau.
* Cañizares, Dulcila 1995. ''La trova tradicional''. 2nd ed, La Habana.
* Cañizares, Dulcila 1999. ''Gonzalo Roig, hombre y creador''.
* Carpentier, Alejo 2001 945
Year 945 ( CMXLV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* January 27 – The co-emperors Stephen and Constantine are overthrown barely ...
''Music in Cuba''. Minneapolis MN. A standard work on the history of Cuban music up to 1940.
* Chediak, Natalio 1998. ''Diccionario del jazz latino''. Fundacion Author, Barcelona.
* Collazo, Bobby 1987. ''La ultima noche que pase contigo: 40 anos de fanandula Cubana''. Cubanacan, Puerto Rico.
* Depestre Catony, Leonardo 1989. ''Homenaje a la musica cubana''. Oriente, Santiago de Cuba. Biographies of Abelardo Barroso, Joseíto Fernández, Paulina Alvarez, Roberto Faz and Pacho Alonso.
* Depestre Catony, Leonardo 1990. ''Cuatro musicos de una villa''. Letras Cubanas, La Habana. Biographies of four musicians from Guanabacoa: Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (; August 7, 1896 – November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires. His over 600 compositions include songs and zarzuelas as ...
, Rita Montaner
Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda (20 August 1900 – 17 April 1958), known as Rita Montaner, was a Cuban singer, pianist and actress. In Cuban parlance, she was a '' vedette'' (a star), and was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and ...
, Bola de Nieve
Bola de Nieve (literally ''Snowball'') (11 September 1911 – 2 October 1971), born Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández, was a Cuban singer-pianist and songwriter. His name originates from his round, black face.
Villa Fernández was born in Guanaba ...
and Juan Arrondo.
* Díaz Ayala, Cristóbal 1981. ''Música cubana del Areyto a la Nueva Trova''. 2nd rev ed, Cubanacan, San Juan P.R. Excellent history up to the 1960s, with a chapter on Cuban music in the US.
* Díaz Ayala, Cristóbal 1988. ''Si te quieres por el pico divertir: historia del pregón musical latinoamericano''. Cubanacan, San Juan P.R. Music based on street-sellers cries; title is taken from lyricof ''Peanut Vendor''.
* Díaz Ayala, Cristóbal 1994. ''Cuba canta y baila: discografía de la música cubana 1898–1925''. Fundación Musicalia, San Juan P.R. A vital research tool.
* Díaz Ayala, Cristóbal 1998. ''Cuando sali de la Habana 1898-1997: cien anos de musica cubana por el mundo''. Cubanacan, San Juan P.R.
* Failde, Osvalde Castillo 1964. ''Miguel Faílde: créador musical del Danzón''. Consejo Nacional de Cultura, La Habana.
* Fairley, Jan. 2000. Troubadours old and new, and ¡Que rico bailo yo! How well I dance. In S. Broughton and M. Ellingham, with J. McConnachie and O. Duane, (eds) ''World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific'' p386-413. Rough Guides, Penguin.
* Fajardo, Ramon 1993. ''Rita Montaner''. La Habana.
* Fajardo, Ramon 1997. ''Rita Montaner: testimonio de una epoca''. La Habana.
* Fernandez Robaina, Tomas 1983. ''Recuerdos secretos de los mujeres publicas''. La Habana.
* Galan, Natalio 1983. ''Cuba y sus sones''. Pre-Textos, Valencia.
* Giro, Radamés (ed) 1993. ''El mambo''. La Habana. Nine essays by Cuban musicians and musicologists.
* Giro, Radamés (ed) 1998. ''Panorama de la musica popular Cubana''. Letras Cubanas, La Habana. Reprints some important essays on Cuban popular music.
* Giro, Radamés 2007. ''Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba''. 4 vols, La Habana. An invaluable source.
* Grenet, Emilio 1939. ''Popular Cuban music''. Havana.
* Leal, Rine 1986. ''Teatro del siglo XIX''. La Habana.
* Leon, Carmela de 1990. ''Sindo Garay: memoria de un trovador''. La Habana.
* Leon, Argeliers 1964. ''Musica folklorica cubana''. Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, La Habana.
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*
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* Linares, María Teresa 1970. ''La música popular''. La Habana, Cuba. Illustrated introduction.
* Linares, María Teresa 1981. ''La música y el pueblo''. La Habana, Cuba.
* Lowinger, Rosa and Ofelia Fox 2005. ''Tropicana nights: the life and times of the legendary Cuban nightclub''. Harcourt, Orlando FL. Fox (1924–2006) was the wife of the owner.
* Loyola Fernandez, Jose 1996. ''El ritmo en bolero: el bolero en la musica bailable cubana''. Huracan, Rio Piedras.
* Manuel, Peter (ed) 1991. ''Essays on Cuban Music: North America and Cuban perspectives''. Lanham MD.
* Manuel, Peter, with K. Bilby and M. Largey. 2006. ''Caribbean currents: Caribbean music from rumba to reggae'' 2nd ed. Temple University.
* Martinez, Orlando 1989. ''Ernesto Lecuona''. La Habana, Cuba.
* Naser, Amín E. 1985. ''Benny Moré: perfil libre''. La Habana, Cuba.
* Orovio, Helio 1995. ''El bolero latino''. La Habana.
* Orovio, Helio 2004. ''Cuban music from A to Z''. Revised by Sue Steward. A biographical dictionary of Cuban music, artists, composers, groups and terms. Duke University, Durham NC; Tumi, Bath.
* Ortiz, Fernando 1950. ''La Afrocania de la musica folklorica de Cuba''. La Habana, revised ed 1965.
*Ortiz, Fernando 1951. ''Los bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de Cuba''. Letras Cubanas, La Habana. Continuation of the previous book; contains transcriptions of percussion innotation and lyrics of toques and cantos a los santos variously in Lucumi and Spanish.
* Ortiz, Fernando 1952. ''Los instrumentos de la musica Afrocubana''. 5 volumes, La Habana.
* Padura Fuentes, Leonardo 2003. ''Faces of salsa: a spoken history of the music''. Translated by Stephen J. Clark. Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. Interviews with top musicians, recorded in the 1989–1993 era.
* Peñalosa, David 2009. ''The clave matrix; Afro-Cuban rhythm: its principles and African origins''. Redway, CA: Bembe Inc. .
* Pérez Sanjuro, Elena 1986. ''Historia de la música cubana''. Miami.
* Perna, Vincenzo 2005. "Timba, the Sound of the Cuban Crisis". Ashgate, Aldershot, UK-Burlington, US
* Pichardo, Esteban 1835 (repr 1985). ''Diccionario provincial casi razionado de voces y frases cubanos''. La Habana. Includes contemporary explanations of musical and dance names.
* Roberts, John Storm 1979. ''The Latin tinge: the impact of Latin American music on the United States''. Oxford. One of the first on this theme; still excellent.
* Roberts, John Storm 1999. ''Latin jazz: the first of the fusions, 1880s to today''. Schirmer, N.Y.
* Rodríguez Ruidíaz, Armando: El origen de la música cubana. Mitos y realidades. Academia.edu, 2015.
* Rodríguez Domíngues, Ezequiel. ''El Trio Matamoros: trienta y cinco anos de música popular''. La Habana.
* Rondon, César Miguel 2008. ''The book of salsa: a chronicle of urban music from the Caribbean to New York City''. University of North Carolina Press.
* Roy, Maya 2002. ''Cuban music: from son and rumba to the Buena Vista Social Club and timba cubana''. Latin American Bureau/Wiener.
* Steward, Sue 1991. ''Salsa: musical heartbeat of Latin America''. Thames & Hudson, London. Highly illustrated.
* Sublette, Ned 2004. ''Cuba and its music: from the first drums to the mambo''. Chicago. First of two planned volumes, covers up to March 1952.
* Sweeney, Philip 2001. ''The Rough Guide to Cuban music: the history, the artists, the best CDs''. Rough Guides, London. Small format.
* Thomas, Hugh 1971. ''Cuba, or the pursuit of freedom''. Eyre & Spottiswoode, London. Revised and abridged edition 2001, Picador, London. The abridged edition, a slim-line 1151 pages, has shortened the section of Cuba's early history. The standard work in English.
* Thomas, Hugh 1997. ''The slave trade: the history of the Atlantic slave trade 1440-1870''. Picador, London. 925 pages.
*Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana.
External links
BBC Radio 3 Audio (60 minutes): Santiago de Cuba and Son Music.
Accessed November 25, 2010.
BBC Radio 3 Audio (60 minutes): Changai and Decimas Music.
Accessed November 25, 2010.
BBC Radio 3 Audio (60 minutes): Matanzas, birthplace of rumba and danzon.
Accessed November 25, 2010.
*
Audio clips: Traditional music of Cuba.
Musée d'ethnographie de Genève. Accessed November 25, 2010.
The Diaz-Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection at FIU
{{Cuban musical forms
Cuban music,