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The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European 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 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.
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 been called the "quintessential Latin American romantic song of the twentieth century".
Bongos are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. The pair consists of the larger hembra and the smaller macho, which are joined by a wooden bridge. They are played with both hands and usually held between the legs, although in some cases, as in classical music, they may be played with sticks or mounted on stands.
José Luis Niemann, better known as Chucho, is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger whose career spans over 50 years. An original member of the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, in 1973 he founded the group Irakere, one of Cuba's best-known Latin jazz bands.
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 the vocal style, lyrical metre and the primacy of the tres, derived from the Spanish guitar. On the other hand, its characteristic clave rhythm, call and response structure and percussion section are all rooted in traditions of Bantu origin.
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. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
A descarga is an improvised jam session consisting of variations on Cuban music themes, primarily son montuno, but also guajira, bolero, guaracha and rumba. The genre is strongly influenced by jazz and it was developed in Havana during the 1950s. Important figures in the emergence of the genre were Cachao, Julio Gutiérrez, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín and Niño Rivera in Cuba, and Tito Puente, Machito and Mario Bauzá in New York. Originally, descargas were promoted by record companies such as Panart, Maype and Gema under the label Cuban jam sessions. From the 1960s, the descarga format was usually adapted by large salsa ensembles, most notably the Fania All-Stars.
Israel López Valdés, better known as Cachao, was a Cuban double bassist and composer. Cachao is widely known as the co-creator of the mambo and a master of the descarga. Throughout his career he also performed and recorded in a variety of music styles ranging from classical music to salsa. An exile in the United States since the 1960s, he only achieved international fame following a career revival in the 1990s.
Irakere is a Cuban band founded by pianist Chucho Valdés in 1973. They won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording in 1980 with their album Irakere. Irakere was a seminal musical laboratory, where historic innovations in both Afro-Cuban jazz and Cuban popular dance music were created. The group used a wide array of percussion instruments like batá, abakuá and arará drums, chequerés, erikundis, maracas, claves, cencerros, bongó, tumbadoras (congas), and güiro.
Orestes López Valdés, nicknamed Macho, was a Cuban multi-instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. As a double bassist he was a founding member of the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra, and later a member of the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba. A long-time member of the charanga Arcaño y sus Maravillas, where he played cello and piano, he is considered the co-creator of the mambo, together with his brother Israel "Cachao" López, and one of the most prolific danzón composers of the 20th century.
Carlos Valdés Galán, better known as Patato, was a Cuban conga player. In 1954, he emigrated from La Habana to New York City where he continued his prolific career as a sideman for several jazz and Latin music ensembles, and occasionally as a bandleader. He contributed to the development of the tunable conga drum which revolutionized the use of the instrument in the US. His experimental descarga albums recorded for Latin Percussion are considered the counterpart to the commercial salsa boom of the 1970s. Tito Puente once called him "the greatest conguero alive today".
Federico Arístides Soto Alejo, better known as Tata Güines, was a Cuban percussionist, bandleader and arranger. He was widely regarded as a master of the conga drum, and alongside Carlos "Patato" Valdés, influential in the development of contemporary Afro-Cuban music, including Afro-Cuban jazz. He specialized in a form of improvisation known as descarga, a format in which he recorded numerous albums throughout the years with Cachao, Frank Emilio Flynn, Estrellas de Areito, Alfredo Rodríguez and Jane Bunnett, among others. In the 1990s he released two critically acclaimed albums as a leader: Pasaporte and Aniversario. His composition "Pa' gozar" has become a standard of the descarga genre.
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 music continually developed during this period. The information listed here is in date order, and comes from whatever records survive to the present day.
Moisés Simons, was a leading Cuban composer, pianist, and orchestra leader. He was the composer of El Manisero which is considered by many to be the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician and has since been recorded by other musicians from around the world hundreds of times.
Guillermo Barreto was a Cuban drummer and timbalero. He was a major figure in the Cuban music scene for more than fifty years and one of the first drummers in Cuba to play Afro-Cuban jazz.
Antonio Arcaño Betancourt was a Cuban flautist, bandleader and founder of Arcaño y sus Maravillas, one of Cuba's most successful charangas. He retired from playing in 1945, but continued as director of the group until its dissolution in 1958. Despite his early retirement due to health problems, he is considered one of the most influential flautists in Cuba.
Pedro Nolasco Jústiz Rodríguez, better known as Peruchín, was a Cuban pianist specializing in jazz-influenced Cuban popular music. He was an important figure in the 1950s descarga scene in Havana, and one of the most influential Cuban pianists of the 20th century.
Julio Gutiérrez was a Cuban music director, pianist, composer and arranger. He was one of the main figures in the music scene of Havana in the 1940s and 1950s, and a pioneer of the descarga. As a songwriter, he is remembered for his 1944 bolero "Inolvidable", which has been performed by numerous artists.
Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature is the debut album by Cuban double bassist Cachao, released in 1957 by Panart. The album is composed of descargas, improvised jam sessions with Cuban themes. It was the fourth installment in Panart's Cuban Jam Session series after Julio Gutiérrez's Cuban Jam Session Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and Niño Rivera's Vol. 3. Unlike the other installments, Cachao's session comprised short improvisations instead of extended jams. The album sold over a million copies and became "a Latin music milestone". In 2013, it was induced into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry.
Jam Session with Feeling is the second descarga album recorded by Cuban bassist Cachao. Following the recording and release of Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature, which received critical and commercial acclaim, Cachao assembled a similar roster of musicians to record Jam Session with Feeling in Havana in 1958. The album was meant to be released by Maype, but due to the political events of the time, it was not released until 1962, in the United States, once Maype had relocated there. The title of the album is a reference to filin (feeling), the 1940s movement in which forms such as the bolero were used as a basis for descargas.
References
- ↑ Acosta, Leonardo (2000). Descarga cubana: el jazz en Cuba, 1900-1950. Havana, Cuba: Ediciones Unión.
- ↑ Acosta, Leonardo (2002). Descarga número dos: el jazz en Cuba, 1950-2002. Havana, Cuba: Ediciones Unión.
- ↑ Salazar, Max (February 1997). "La Descarga Cubana: The Beginning and Its Best". Latin Beat Magazine . Vol. 7, no. 1. Retrieved October 20, 2015.