Big Blog 2: Cuban Music

     When deciding what to do my final big blog on, I chose the traditional music of Cuba so that I could research and explore the music of my mom's side of my family. I have grown up listening to all sorts of music, my favorite modern American music genres, Greek music on my dad's side of my family, and then of course traditional Cuban music on my mom's side, so I was very excited to take a deeper look. The traditional music of Cuba is a mixture of influences from different nations. Traditional Cuban music has influences mainly from West Africa, as I learned when writing my blog on salsa, and Spain as well. Cuban music has also influenced many other styles around the globe from Latin America and the Caribbean, and has influenced genres like rhumba, Afro-Cuban jazz, salsa, hip-hip, and soukous. Cuban music is such an amalgamation of different influences, that it is often widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed and enduring styles of music in the world.  

This is a song that I have heard many times; it's played at any occasion from a wedding to a quinceanera to just backyard cookout. I love this song. 

    Cuba has five basic genres of Afro-Cuban music which include rumba, son, cancion, son Cubano, danzon, and punto guarjira. Son Cubano is a style of music that originated in Cuba in the 1920s and became on of the most popular rhythms world wide. It combines elements of Spanish cancion and the the Spanish guitar with African rhythms and percussion instruments. Son is the a basis for most Cuban music genres. Additionally, son mixed with other musical influences in New York City to give birth to salsa music. Danzon is a ballroom dance music played by Cuban charangas. It was brought by the French immigrants feeing the Haitian Revolution who settled in east Cuba. The danzon is typically danced in the winter, and in the summer they waltzed. Rumba, on the other hand, is Afro-Cuban drum and vocal style from Matanzas and Havana. 

This is a song that is son Cubano. 

    Traditional Cuban music culture has most of its roots in African heritage. Because of these roots, there are similarities in the instruments between the two cultures. Three of the most common instruments seen in traditional Cuban music are the congas, bongos, and bata. Congas is a percussion instrument that actually originated in Africa. The congas, which are also known as tumbadora, is one of the most widely played drums in traditional Cuban music. They are long barrel-like drums that are played on only one side, and they are used in genres like conga (comes from the name of the drum) and rumba. There are three types of conga drums: quinto, the tallest in size, tres, the middle, and the tumba, the shortest. Bongos are another kind of drums that are well known around the world. Their exact history is not clear, it is believed that they were used by enslaved Africans in Cuba as early as the nineteenth century. Bongos play a part in some of the influential Cuban music genres including Son Cubano, Afro-Cuban Jazz, and Salsa. Lastly, the bata finishes the trinity of Cuban drums. Like the others, the other bata also originated in Africa, specifically Nigeria. Most music groups use all three of the types of drums in their music. The bata, unlike the other drums, have an hourglass shape and is double sided with one side slightly larger than the other. 

    Opera music is actually a very popular in Cuba and has been for a long while. Opera has been present in Cuba since the early parts of the eighteenth century when the first theater, Coliseo, was built. Since then, the people of Cuba have highly enjoyed opera. Many Cuban composers have cultivated the operatic genre and some are known world wide. Two famous Cuban opera singers are Francisco Fernandez Dominicis and Marta Perez. 

    Cuban music has found its way throughout the whole world. In the United States specifically, Cuba has brought a lot of musical influences. As waves of people immigrated north out of Cuba into the United States, Cuban music fused with other music forms in America. In the mid-twentieth century, new popular musical styles were created from this fusion such as mambo, cha cha cha, and salsa. Salsa is very strongly rooted in Afro-Cuban music genres, which I went into detail about on my blog on salsa music. Salsa, rumba, conga, and other Cuban genres have been around as early as its discovery in the 1400's which have helped to shape Latin music as a whole. Afro-Cuban music, which is mostly jazz and forms of jazz, is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz is believed by many to have emerged in the early 1940s in New York City, much like salsa. 

Here is some cha cha cha ballroom music.

    The mambo and cha cha cha are similar in their roots as the the cha cha cha somewhat came from mambo and the mambo somewhat came from danzon. The mambo came from when Cuban musicians Israel Lopez and his brother Orestes experimented with there danzon music by adding new rhythms. The birth of mambo was during the late 1930s and it revolutionized Latin music. Mambo also swept across America soon after. The cha cha cha is a popular rhythmic dance style derived from the mambo. It is said to have been created in Cuba in 1954 by Cuban violinist Enrique Jorrin. It was played first by Cuban charanga bands and then eventually by Latin jazz and salsa musicians. The cha cha cha is composed of a series of peculiar scraping and shuffling sounds. 

Works Cited 

Flint, James. “The Music of Cuba.” Study.com, https://study.com/learn/lesson/cuban-music-artists-genres.html.

Folkways. “Music of Cuba.” Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, https://folkways.si.edu/music-of-cuba/caribbean-latin-world/album/smithsonian.

“What Is Cuba's Traditional Music? .” On Secret Hunt -, 31 May 2022, https://www.onsecrethunt.com/what-is-cubas-traditional-music/.