Famous Cuban Artists

• Ana Cristina, singer, actress, composer
• AJ McLean, singer, member of American boyband The Backstreet Boys
• Benny Moré, singer, songwriter, conductor, arranger 
• Celia Cruz, singer 
• Chucho Valdés, pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger. 
• German Nogueira Gomez, songwriter, composer, producer 
• Mongo Santamaría, jazz musician

Famous Dancers

• Alicia Alonso, Prima Ballerina Assoluta, director of the Cuban National Ballet (Ballet Nacional de Cuba)
• Carlos Acosta
• Fernando Bujones
• Jose Manuel Carreño - American Ballet Theater principal dancer
• Lydia Diaz Cruz, prima ballerina
• Miguel Campaneria, ballet dancer, currently artistic director of the National Ballet Theater of Puerto Rico
• Vida Guerra, video dancer
• Yat-Sen Chang, principal dancer, English National Ballet

Styles of Cuban Music

Son

Son is a style of popular dance music that originated in the Oriente province of Cuba. It is the foundation of modern salsa. Son combines the structure and elements of spanish voices and guitars with african rhythms and percussion instruments. There are several hybrids of Son, including Son-montuno, Afro-son and Guajira-son.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btsbD5F-AOQ&feature=related





Rumba

Rumba is mainly of percussive rhythms, song and dance that originated in cuba. It is a combination of the musical traditions of Africans brought to Cuba as slaves and Spanish colonizers.

• Cuban Rumba, percussion, song and dance styles that owe their origin to African slaves in Cuba.
• Rumba (dance), international dance styles that correspond to slower Cuban music, such as the bolero-son.
• African Rumba, Inspired by the Cuban son, a style of music that originated in Congo, and evolved into Latin music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNq3pddygeE

Timba

The newest and most controversial music out of Cuba, Timba is like salsa on steroids. It incorporates influences from Brazilian music, R&B, hip-hop and salsa. Note the different roles the piano and bass play. Just two samples do not do justice to this anything-goes genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TvrHC4qtgA


 
Danzón

A style of music influenced by European dances, first developed in the late nineteenth century. The form later was expanded to contain a section initially known as "nuevo ritmo," later called mambo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrUtURg4rJw 

This song is called "El Carretero" by "Barrio Cubano de Ronald Rubinel". This song clearsly expresses the cuban style of music. It creates like a feeling for dancing and just follos the rhythm.
The main tune of the song is basicly the male voice. It has a low voice with a latin sense and it is jumpy, angular in some parts.

It has a large variaty of instruments. These are mainly the cuban percussion and string instruments named above. It has a constant bongo which marks the rhythm. It can also be heard the congas which play along with the bongos. Both are playing low sounds. Together with the percussion instruments, there is a cuban tres wich plays the same melody all the song at low, mid-range pitch. All these instruments form a song which produces a major pitch feeling. 

The song has a strophic structure because the same beat in instruments like the bongos and cuban tres are repeted over and over again. Which is the case of the rhythm where the time signature is the same in all of the song.

String/metal Instruments



Music in Cuba is basicly composed of percussion and string instruments. Percussion is mostly wooden drums with a leather top for echoing sounds. Whereas string ones reffer mainly to different types of guitars. The design of these are based on Arabic and African instruments.

Cuban Laúd

 

These string instrument are made almost entirely of wood. The sounboard is a teardrop-shaped resonant wood. In all laúds the soundboard has a single decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The design of these instrument was actually influenced by arabic guitars. 

The cuban laúd has actually 12 strings to get a high range of different tones.

Strings are made of animal gut, usually from the small intestine of sheep. However these strings can be made with a synthetic substitute,metal windings

  Cuban Tres

The Cuban tres has three groups of two strings each for a total of six strings. From the low pitch to the highest, the principal tuning is in C Major: G, C, E. A tres player is called a tresero in Cuba

Even though it looks like a guitar, the actual playing of it is rhythmic with melodic tunes. Chords are strummed by the tresero, and it strengthens the melody.

 

Marímbula

The Marimbula is a large wooden box with holes on the front. There is a bridge where the metal fingers are put. On top of them, a pressure bar holds them in place. By plucking the metal fingers, sound vibrations are transmitted through the bridge and into the whole body of the instrument. The body acts as an  amplifyer of the sound produced.

To tune their instrument, the player loosens the pressure bar on the marimbula and moves the metal fingers up or down. This changes the pitch to the desired tone.

Its origin is from sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Percussion Instruments

  Batá Drums

These are made up of three hourglass-shaped drums of different sizes (as shown in the picture). Depending on the size, the sound and echo the instrument will perform. The design of these instruments were influenced by African drums.

The larger one is known as Iyá (mother drum) which creates the deepest tones, the medium one Itótele (father drum) and finally the samller one is Okónkolo (baby drum).These together form like a percussion family. Each drum has two leather membranes of various sizes which produce different sounds.

A red resinous substance of ritual significance, fardela, is placed on the center of the major head, modifying the vibrations of the drum head when played.
 

Interesting Detail: Before, these were used for religious or semi-religious ceremonies. Specially from the native culture from the land of Nigeria.

Bongos

The bongos are of Afro-Cuban origin and are used mainly in Latin American music. This musical instrument comes form the musical style Son. The bigger drum is known as hembra (female) and the smaller one macho (male)

It consists of two small drums, of different sizes, held together by a strap or a piece of wood or metal. It makes a separation between the sound boxes so tunes aren`t mixed. Each skin has a skin which is tunned to a different pitch. Depending on the place where the skin is played, the sound it will produced.

The main musical function of the bongo is accompaning the melody and creates great stability in the song.The bongo is involved in  many genres like pop music, jazz and salsa.

Congas

Congas are typical insrtrument which origin is from Cuba.These have a staved wooden or fiberglass shell, and a screw-tensioned drumhead. They are usually played in sets of two to four with the fingers and palms of the hand. 

In Cuba, congas are called tumbadoras. Conga players are called congueros or tumbadores. They have a skin top which, like the bongos ,use a system of tuning where some parts of the skin produce high or lower sounds.

The most well-known rhythmical music which are played with congas is "marcha".This rhythm is commonly played on 1 to 3 congas. The marcha is the most common rhythm in Salsa/Son.


Timbales

Timbales are shallow drums with metal casing. They are shallower in shape than congas, and usually much higher tuned. The player (timbalero) uses a variety of stick strokes and rolls on the skins to produce a wide range of sounds during solos or accompanying the melody. They have a fully adjustable tripod stand.

The timbales are a pair of "Cubanized" orchestral timpani, originally used in the nineteenth century Cuban music genre known as danzón. 

 

e Cuban Music e

Cuban music is a mixture of styles and genres with pop music and jazz. It has a long history with influences from Africa and Spain. This music has also been shaped by the styles of Europe and Latin-Americ, for example.