Son Cubano.

Because of its deep penetration into nearly every

aspect of musical culture within Cuba, its vast international
dissemination and popularization, and its immense impact on
Latino popular dance music, son cubano is the most important
of the many popular music genres that originated and
developed in Cuba during the twentieth century. The genre,
which gave birth to or heavily influenced a multitude of
genres, including *mambo, * rumba, ^charanga, bugalú, *salsa,
songo, timba, and ’‘'Latin jazz, is often described as the first
invented by Cubans and as the common denominator in
almost all of Cuban music. Emerging from the rural areas of
el Oriente, Cuba's eastern provinces, particularly around
Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo, during the late
nineteenth century, the original manifestations of son (the
qualifier cubano is added only to distinguish the genre from
Mexican *sones, such as son jalisciense or son huasteco) consisted of
a constant alternation between the improvisations of a solo
singer and a short composed refrain sung by a small group.
As the genre became increasingly urbanized, an additional
structural element, an initial closed “song” section, was
added, thereby solidifying the binary form that it retains to
this day, the tema or son, a thirty-two bar song—usually in
AABA form—followed by the montuno, which is usually
much longer than the tema and consists of extended
instrumental solos (called the descarga) and short precomposed
horn sections (the mambo or yambú) as well as call-and-
response vocals (called the guajeo and the coro or estribillo,
respectively).
This binary structure is an example of the son’s
representing a mix of European- and African-derived
elements, the tema being derived from the European song
tradition, while the call-and-response montuno has strong
African antecedents. This combination exhibits itself in other
elements of the genre, including the instrumental ensemble,
where European-based plucked stringed instruments, such as
the guitar and the tres (a Cuban invention consisting of three
sets of double strings), play alongside African-based
percussion, such as the bongó (also a Cuban-invented
instrument), and the marimbula, a bass instrument derived from
the African thumb piano, the mbira. The singing,
predominantly black and mulatto musicians singing about
Afro-Cuban * barrio life in a smooth European-based bel
canto style, and the dance, a combination of a European-
derived couples dance with African-derived rhythmic steps
and movements, also exemplify this mixture of influences.
The Afro-Cuban son montuno, a musical genre that combines
a Cuban son with an improvised montuno section, resulting in
an intense, almost relentless quality, is fundamentally at the
root of today’s Latina/o popular music, including salsa.
Admired by the peasant or working classes, a son is a genre of
dance music that combines Spanish and African elements.
The montuno is usually, but not exclusively, cued in by a
break in music with the piano playing rhythmically. This
section of the son is open and features a coró with an
individual solo from the horn section. A coró is an impro-
vised call-and-response section between a member of the horn
section and the lead vocalist. It usually consists of two eight-
bar phrases, during which the horn fakes a full solo after
trading sections with the lead vocalist. A son montuno is not fast
paced but rather performed at a medium tempo, usually in a
reverse clave (2/3) form.
A sonero is literally the individual in a salsa group that sings
or plays the Afro-Cuban son, one of the most popular Afro-
Caribbean musical forms. Moreover, a sonero is the individual
lead singer that usually improvises, rhythmically, melodically,
and verbally, against the refrain of the coró in the modern salsa
ensemble. The word guarachero is also used to define the
person’s role in the salsa ensemble. A sonero usually does his or
her improvising over the son montuno section of a salsa piece. In
this part of the piece the vocalist will trade improvised sections
with a member of the horn section, which consists of
saxophone, trombones, and trumpets.
The confluence of cultures embodied by son would lead to its
adoption as an important marker of an emerging Cuban
national identity that began developing in the decades
following Cuba’s independence from Spain in 1902 and that
sought to unite the entire country—black, white, and mulatto.
This process began with the genre’s introduction in the capital
city of Havana around 1909, brought by immigrants from el
Oriente serving obligatory terms as soldiers of the permanent
army, a practice that led to mass urbanization during this time.
The early son ensembles were trios, consisting of guitar, tres, and
maracas, with at least two of the musicians singing,
exemplified by Trío Matamoros, which was founded in
Santiago in 1912 by Miguel Matamoros and would reach its
height of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, and Trío Oriente,
a group formed within the army before 1910, which would,
once its members moved to Havana, add a bongocero, effectively
transforming itself into a cuarteto. While the practice of trios and
cuartetos performing at dances and parties was brought from el
Oriente, others emerged in Havana after son’s introduction.
These include the publication, in the form of sheet music, and
recording and sones and the development of coros de son, choral
groups of eighteen to twenty singers, in Havana barrios, the
groups often being associated with a particular barrio.
The development of son as a marker of national identity
continued in the early 1920s when the genre became popular
throughout Cuba, spurred in part by the increasing availability
of record players, more affordable records, and the introduction
of regular radio broadcasts on the island in 1922. Trios and
cuartetos were playing at parties thrown by some of the richest
white families in Santiago by around 1920, but the elite in
Havana was slower to embrace the genre. With the exception
of their hugely popular “El son de la loma” (Son of the Hill),
Trío Matamoros was playing exclusively *danzones in their
performances in the capital. The genre’s general acceptance by
Havana’s largely white upper class would not be solidified
until the 1926 appearance of Sexteto Habanero, a son group
consisting of black m u s i c i a n s , a t the* Presidential Palace in
Havana at the invitation of mulatto president Cer- ardo
Machado.
Son',s continued popularity in Havana in the 1920s also led to
increased urbanization and sophistication within the genre to
accommodate for larger, more cosmopolitan audiences. The son
cuarteto was soon eclipsed by the sexteto—which added claves
and marimbula (later replaced by the stringed bass)—and the
septeto de son—which added a trumpet. Recordings by the
leading exemplar of this format, Ignacio Piñeiro’s Septeto
Nacional, and Sexteto Habanera became popular throughout
Cuba and abroad. This international dissemination eventually
led to the emergence of New York and Paris as important
centers for performance and recording by Cuban musicians and
to contact between son and jazz musicians, which would affect
both genres greatly over the ensuing decades. The immediate
effect on son was the integration of more complex, jazz-
influenced harmonies, faster tempos, and the development of a
more percussive, rhythmic sound.
The event that served as a catalyst for the popularity of
Cuban music worldwide was the 1931 release of Don
*Azpiazu’s groundbreaking recording of “The Peanut Vendor,”
a somewhat sanitized arrangement of the Moisés Simón-
penned son-pregón (literally son cry) “El manisero” (derived
from the calls of street vendors in Havana), which, while it had
no connection or similarity to the Cuban genre rumba, was
given the name rhumba. The record was a nationwide hit in the
United States and triggered a rhumba craze in Tin Pan Alley, on
Broadway, and in Hollywood, where in the hands of American
songwriters and musicians it became diluted and
Americanized, even though its exoticism was one of the main
reasons for its popularity. The most prominent figure in
popularizing rhumba was the Spanish-born and Cuban-bred
Xavier * Cugat. Cugat, who, in addition to recording and
touring, appeared in a number of Hollywood films, made no
claims to the authenticity of the music he was playing,
preferring to point to it as a way of introducing Americans to
Latin music.
In Cuba, son continued to develop and exert great influence
throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Its capacity for hybridization
led to the development of genres such as bolero-son, son-guaguancó,
and even blue-son, and its popularity and influence permeated
Cuban music to the extent that charanga bands—flute and violin
orchestras that had, to that point, mainly been playing danzones
and *boleros—began including sones in their repertoire and, in
accordance, incorporating more rhythmic elements into their
music. The son ensemble continued to grow, with tres player,
arranger, and composer Arsenio Rodriguez adding congas to
his band in 1938. Rodriguez, along with his Conjunto Casino,
would be a guiding force in the development of the genre. The
inclusion of congas was followed by the addition of piano and
a second trumpet, forming a new ensemble, dubbed a conjunto
sonero. In addition to, and perhaps because of, the expanded
format, arrangements became increasingly regulated, including
the incorporation of precomposed trumpet parts and a
standardization of the accompaniment patterns played by the
rhythm section. In the process, the son gave up some of its
informal, co 11ective looseness.
The 1940s also saw the development of mambo, a
combination of Afro- Cuban rhythms and big band jazz, the
development of which is alternately attributed to Rodriguez in
Cuba, Dámaso ’Perez Prado in México and the West Coast of
the United States, and * Machito and Mario * Bauza in New
York. The genre began as an expansion of the mam bo section,
the horn- driven section of the montuno in son, and incorporated
elements of son, including the common use of ostinato (repeated
melodic and rhythmic patterns) patterns in the saxophones
adapted from the tres patterns of son. The subsequent mambo
craze in the United States during the early 1950s was paralleled
in Cuba by conjunto sonero’s period of greatest popularity,
attributable in part to the introduction of television to the
island. This popularity was led by artists such as Beny Moré—
a singer who, after working with many groups including Trío
Matamoros and Prado’s orchestra, led his own group, Banda
Gigante, which incorporated mambo elements into son— and La
Sonora Matancera, which featured a four-trumpet horn line and
a succession of singers that included Daniel Santos and a
young Celia *Cruz.
Son fell out of official favor after the 1959 revolution, being
derided by the Castro government as a vestige of the decadent
Batista regime. However, variants on the genre, including the
changüí from Guantanamo, remained popular in the rural areas
of the Oriente. Meanwhile, in New York, bands that had been
playing charanga and bugalú—a mix of Afro-Cuban rhythms with
rock and roll that served as a survival technique for mambo
groups in the wake of the latter genre’s vast popularity—turned
to the conjunto sonero, spurring what was called a típico revival in
the mid-1960s. This revival was partially the result of the
influence that Arsenio Rodriguez, who had relocated there
from Cuba in 1950, was having on the local music scene and of
appearances in the city by La Sonora Matancera.
Around this same time, a brasher, rawer version of son,
dubbed salsa to obscure its Cuban origins, was being embraced
by Nuyoricans as a musical expression of their ethnic identity
in light of the new social consciousness that was seizing the
racially volatile urban areas of the United States. This new
style was exemplified by Willie * Colón, a Nuyorican teenager
who led a band featuring a trombone section in the place of the
standard trumpets and represented himself as el malo (the bad
boy), the image reflecting the alienated energy of the barrio.
Salsa would go on to attain popularity in many parts of Latin
America and to be seen by many as the foremost expression of
Latino music in the 1970s, becoming a symbol of pan-Latino
identity in the process.
During the 1970s, the dual trends of experimentalism and
traditionalism typified son in Cuba. The decade’s
experimental movement was preceded by the formation of
Los Van Van in 1969, led by Juan Formell, bass player and
former musical director of Orquesta Revé, a charanga that
specialized in
changüí and incorporated experimental elements, such as the
inclusion of an expanded set of timbales, trombones, and bata
drums. Los Van Van, also a charanga, infused son with elements
from rock, rhythm and blues, jazz, and Brazilian music,
including the addition of electric guitars, synthesizers, and a
drum set, and abandoned traditional standardized rhythmic
patterns in the bass and piano, naming the new hybrid songo.
Following in this same vein was singer/songwriter Adalberto
Alvarez’s group Son 14. The leaders of the movement toward
traditionalism were tres player and former rock guitarist Juan de
Marcos González, who formed Sierra Maestra along with future
¡Cubanismo! founder Jesús Alemañy in 1976 with the goal of
keeping the torch of the great septetos alive for a younger
generation, and guitarist and singer Eliades Ochoa, who took
over the leadership of Cuarteto Patria, a group that had existed
since the 1940s, in 1978.
In 1988, former Los Van Van and Irakere flautist José Luis
“El Tosco” Cortés formed NG (Nueva Generación) La Banda, a
group that combined songo with funk and rap influences,
spawning the new genre timba. With NG La Banda, El Tosco’s
aim was to combine the flavor of Los Van Van with the musical
aggressiveness of the Latin jazz giants Irakere. Timba continued
its popularity into the mid-1990s, when the son of the conjuntos
soneros of the 1950s was given unexpected and unprecedented
exposure and popularity at an international level with the 1997
release of * Buena Vista Social Club. Begun by musical director and
organizer Juan de Marcos González and producer Ry Cooder,
the American guitarist, as a tribute to the artists of the past, the
album went on to sell 4 million copies, win a Grammy Award,
and spawn international tours, a host of solo albums by
musicians featured on the original recording, and an Academy
Award-nominated documentary.
While Ry Cooder insists in his liner notes to Buena Vista Social
Club that “this music is alive in Cuba, not some remnant in a
museum that we stumbled into,” director Wim Wenders’s
documentary Buena Vista Social Club posits the endeavor as a
salvation project, not merely of the careers of singer Ibrahim
Ferrer and pianist Rubén González, both of whom had retired
from performing, but of the genre. Wenders focused the
attention of the film on the older musicians, such as Ferrer,
González, Pío Leyva, and Compay Segundo (whose
participation was secured only after he returned to Cuba from an
international tour), and gave much screen time to the white
American Cooder— who has always downplayed his role in the
recordings—while almost completely ignoring the original
impetus of the project, the black Cuban Juan de Marcos
González. Buena Vista Social Club and its many offspring served to
fuel a roots movement among musicians in Cuba and nostalgia
for an imagined pre-Castro Cuba in the United States that
dovetailed with the retro-lounge trend of the late 1990s and with
a more sympathetic and open attitude toward Cuba on the part of
both the Clinton government and a good portion of the American
public.
 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 773

Further Reading
Cooder, Ry. Liner notes from Buena Vista Social Club. Nonesuch Records 79478- 2,
1997. Compact Disc.
Manuel, Peter, Kenneth Bilby, and Michael Largely. Caribbean Currents:
Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1995.
Mauleón, Rebecca. Salsa Guide for Piano and Ensemble. Petaluma, CA: Sher
Music, 1993.
“PBS Presents Buena Vista Social Club.” Public Broadcasting System,
http://www.pbs. org/buenavista.
Robbins, James. “The Cuban Son as Form, Genre, and Symbol.”
Latin American Music Review 11.2 (December 1990): 182-200.
Rodriguez, Olavo Alén. “Cuba.” In South America, Mexico, Central
America, and the Caribbean. Vol. 2 of The Garland Encyclopedia of
World Music, edited by Dale Olsen and Daniel Sheehy. New
York: Garland, 1998.
Rondon, César Miguel. El Libro de la Salsa. Caracas: Impreso por
Editorial Arte, 1980.
Steward, Sue. ;Música! Salsa, Rumba, Merengue, and More. San Francisco,
Ramón Versage

CA: Chronicle Books, 1999.