Cuba, when an island shaped the rhythm of the world

Sound, mambo, rumba, bolero: rhythms born in the barrios of Santiago de Cuba and Havana that conquered the dancefloors of Paris, New York, and Johannesburg. A small island of 110,000 square kilometers that gave the world more influential musical styles than any other Caribbean country. How did this sharp crucible of history—a mix of slavery, Spanish colonization, and African religions—become the matrix for Afro-Caribbean music and a large part of world popular music?

From African survivals to the first creole sounds

After the near-total extermination of the Taíno indigenous populations in the 16th century, Spanish colonists imported tens of thousands of African slaves to the island’s sugar plantations, mainly from Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, and the Dahomey region¹. This massive settlement explains why Cuba possesses the richest syncretic repertoire of the Antillean arc. It is here that the term transculturation—imagined by anthropologist Fernando Ortiz—finds its most advanced form: Cuban music is not a collage, but a recreation².

Two major veins interwove. The first, Hispanic, brought the guitar, the tres (double-stringed three-string guitar), verses and décimas of Andalusian poetry, French contradanza, and the habanera—that ternary rhythm that would become the pulse of Cuban music³. The second, African, injected polyrhythm, call-and-response, variable-tone percussion—conga, bongó—and the ritual structures of Yoruba and Congo cults⁴.

The result: el son, born in the province of Oriente at the end of the 19th century. Originally peasant music, played on guitar and maracas, it gradually became Cuba’s reference genre⁵. In 1920, Sexteto Habanero added the trumpet and recorded the first el son discs, launching a phenomenon that would conquer the whole world.

Did you know? Cuban el son is not just a musical genre: it is the foundation of salsa, mambo, pachanga, and many Latin American styles. Without el son, there would be no salsa or timba.

The golden age: from conjunto to mambo (1930-1959)

If el son is the root, it was Arsenio Rodríguez (1911-1970) who invented its modern version. Blind, a genius guitarist, he expanded the sextet into a conjunto—piano, double bass, tres, congas, bongó, several trumpets, and choir⁶. He added pre-composed brass sections, the moñas, and popularized the verso-corro-montuno structure that would become the model for all urban Cuban music. His formula traveled to New York and served as a foundation for salsa⁷.

At the same time, the danzón—elegant salon music born in the 1870s, structured around violin, flute, and trombones⁸—evolved into danzón-mambo. Dámaso Pérez Prado, nicknamed the “King of Mambo”⁹, transformed the danzón into a dancing, orchestral, and frenetic style. Mambo exploded in the United States at the end of the 1940s, in New York ballrooms, and spread across Europe, Africa, and Asia.

It was also this period that made Celia Cruz (1925-2003) the iconic voice of guaracha and el son. Joined by Sonora Matancera in 1950, she sang “La vida es un carnaval” with such energy that her nickname Reina de la Salsa would never leave her¹⁰. Unlike many colleagues, she chose exile after 1959 and established her career in the United States.

Benny Moré (1919-1963)—nicknamed “el Bárbaro del Ritmo”¹¹—dominated the scene while alive. Absolute master of el son, bolero, and dance, he directed his own Banda Gigante where saxophones, trumpets, and trombones played Cuban music with big band jazz sophistication. His legacy remains today the absolute reference for Cuban salsa¹².

Timba: revolution and reinvention (1980-2000)

After the 1959 revolution, Cuban music became state-owned property under EGREM’s tutelage. The most ambitious artists emigrated—Celia Cruz, Cachao, Omara Portuondo¹³—while the system trained generations of extremely technical musicians in public schools. But it was precisely this high-level training that nourished a radical mutation.

In the 1980s, José Luis « El Tosco » Cortés founded NG La Banda by exploding classical formats. He mixed el son, rumba, salsa, funk, jazz, and rock, and invented a term: timba¹⁴. Timba is faster, more syncopated, and more violent than New York salsa. Its texts, often explicit and rooted in popular neighborhoods, made it a music of the street as much as of the stage¹⁵.

Two formations dominated this era. Los Van Van, led by bassist Juan Formell (1942-2014), preceded NG La Banda by twenty years, introducing funk and soul elements. Formell, nicknamed “el padre de la timba,” is without doubt the most important figure in the history of Cuban popular music¹⁶. Albums like La Bossa Nueva se pone Pa’ lante (1982) and Nengón (1983) anticipated timba by several years. NG La Banda, from 1988 onward, pushed the concept to its paroxysm with ultra-compressed rhythms, shouted choirs, and dense brass arrangements¹⁷.

It was also in the 1990s that the Buena Vista Social Club movement rediscovers traditional Cuban music for a global public. Having recorded centenarian and forgotten musicians from the Guanabacoa neighborhood in Havana, their 1997 album sold over 8 million copies and inspired a film by Wim Wenders¹⁸. Ironically, this commercial success restored the global value of Cuban heritage—but without the musicians themselves benefiting widely from the money¹⁹.

New generation and reparto: the sound of crisis and renewal

The turn of the 2010s marks a turning point. After the death of Juan Formell (2014), many prominent artists left Cuba — Cimafunk, Adalberto Álvarez, Yotuel (Extodô) — leaving a void that the young fill through sheer ingenuity²⁰. The arrival of the internet on the island in 2018 changes the game²¹: without a formal recording industry, new talents make their mark through Instagram, YouTube, and clips shot on smartphones.

Two phenomena coexist. First, a very high-level jazz and fusion scene: Cimafunk (Héctor Julio Pérez) fuses funk, timba and salsa with boldness that earns him international tours; brothers Diego and Fabio Abreu, 19 and 17 years old, triumph at Fábrica de Arte Cubano with traditional Haitian jazz inspired by Irakere and Eliades Ochoa²². Their group, Tributos, won the 2025 Cubadisco Opera Prima award²³.

Next comes reparto, an urban subgenre born in the barrios of Havana. A fusion of reggaeton (the Puerto Rican dembow), Cuban clave and texts explicitly rooted in the street, reparto is nicknamed “the poor man’s reggaeton”²⁴. Artists like El Taiger, Bebeshito, Wampi (Dasiel Mustelier) or Chocolate MC (pioneer with “Parapapampan” in 2010) have exported this sound to Miami, Madrid and Lima, where it has achieved considerable success²⁵. In June 2025, Gente de Zona filled the Kaseya Center in Miami before more than 14,000 spectators, proving that the Cuban urban scene now has a major international foothold²⁶.

The paradox is glaring: Cuba produces the most syncretic music on the continent — a mix of rumba, timba, jazz, funk, hip hop, reggaeton and folk — while suffering from structural isolation. The US embargo blocks digital payments (Spotify, which accounts for 80% of Cuban music listening, is not accessible on the island)²⁷. Musicians must rely on intermediaries in third countries for distribution, and visas for the United States remain almost impossible²⁸. In face of all this, Cuban creativity continues: as the singer Manolín Simonet sings in El puente, the bridge between Cubans on the island and those in exile, music remains the indestructible link.

An inheritance that does not stop

Cuban music is not museum folklore: it is today’s creative industry, fragile but alive. From the son montuno played by a tres from Guantánamo to reparto produced in a makeshift studio at La Víbora, it continues to write pages that the whole world listens to. The island has given the world rhythms that still dance in clubs in Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Berlin — not as a curiosity, but as the living foundation of global popular music.

Founding and contemporary figures

Sources and references