Son cubano

node · earth · Cuba — from Oriente to Havana

The Cuban form in which a Spanish-derived song tradition and West and West-Central African rhythmic organisation meet on equal terms, and the root from which most twentieth-century Latin dance music grows. It came out of the rural east of Cuba — Oriente — where precursors called changüí, nengón and kiribá were played by a singer with a tres, the small Cuban guitar with three doubled courses. Around 1909 the form travelled west to Havana, carried in part by soldiers of the Permanent Army, and there acquired the clave, the five-stroke asymmetric timeline of Havana rumba, which is the feature that lets an entire ensemble lock without a conductor. In 1916 the tres player Ricardo Martínez founded the Cuarteto Oriental, which recorded in Havana in 1917 and in 1920 expanded into the Sexteto Habanero, fixing the classic line-up: guitar, tres, bongó, claves, maracas and double bass. Son matters to this Journey because it is a control case. Cuba was Catholic, Spanish and permissive of drums; the same African inheritance that produced a string-led, percussion-poor blues in Mississippi produced, ninety miles away, a percussion-led ensemble music with the timeline audible on the surface.