Cuban Music

Cuban music is mainly a mixture of influences from both Africa and Spain. The Spanish conquistadors were the ones who introduced their own European styles into the area, and the slave trade from Africa left its mark as well. Getting a little deeper into this mixture, one can focus on the rhythms and melodies that help to show how these influences are at work. For instance, in Cuban music the drums are effectively talking to one another, which comes from the African tradition. Arabs from the Middle East spread into Africa and Spain thus serving as a further influence while simultaneously uniting these different cultures. Berber culture took root in Andalucia, Spain, and Rome and Germanic influences also shaped the history of the Iberian Peninsula. Afro-Cuban culture was a rich mix of Catholicism, African heritage and Spanish customs, and the music that poured out of that mix was based on this intersection of customs, culture and influences.
The intermixing of African beats and Spanish music is essentially what produced the Cuban style. The Spanish preferred the guitar: it was their favorite instrument as it was portable and could be played by the average person in the field. However, other instruments such as wind instruments and the violin were common as well. By the 19th and later in the 20th centuries these influences became more and more pronounced as the popularity of jazz and blues and swing in America grew. Cuban music is sometimes confused with the same styles that emerged in New Orleans and spread across the U.S., but really it is quite different. As Sublette (2007) points out, “Cuban music has something else: clave (a rhythmic key) and those undulating, repeating, melodic-rhythmic loops of fixed pitches called (with different shades of meaning) guajeo, montuno, or tumbao. These appear in American music, but in Cuban music they dominate, and they largely entered the American musical vocabulary from Cuba” (p. 159). Moreover, the blues was more of an Afro-American phenomenon: it was unique to the tradition of the African-American experience in the U.S. The Cuban experience was not the same, and as Sublette (2007) notes quite simply, “Cuban musicians don’t have the blues. They don’t feel those minute pitch distinctions that a blues musician makes automatically, and they tend to sound a little stiff playing against swing time” (p. 166). Cuban musicians are more upbeat, using multiple rhythms and melodies to channel a spirit that is neither oppressed nor constrained: it is dynamic, expressive, flowing, and rhythmic.
The beat of blues and swing musicians in America was, by comparison, “basic”—as Dizzy Gillespie put it (Sublette, 2007, p. 170). The beats that informed Cuban music came mainly from the Congo and the Yoruba: the Congo, “with its deep culture of magic, music, and dance, must be reckoned one of the most important influences” of Cuban music (Sublette, 2007, p. 175). Today, Cuban artists like the Buena Vista Social Club provide an example of what the mixture of these African beats and Spanish melodies on stringed instruments sounds like: the lyrics are in Spanish, the twangy guitar and the polyphonic beats combine with a Hispanic melody to create a sound that is intoxicating and moving but not nearly in the same way that a blues song is. When the horns kick in it sends the sounds soaring even higher making the music transcendent in a way that is soulful, colorful and eloquent. There is a hint of the Spanish Spaghetti Western sound to it—one hears Ennio Morricone coming out of the horns and strings of the music.
In the “Chan Chan” one can hear these sounds. In the “De Camino a La Vereda” one hears a different sound—one that is folksy with multiple voices coming through the chorus and the rhythm having a Latino sound that smacks of Old World simplicity. The horns and the bells give it an upbeat, happy feeling that is communal while the blues tradition is more individualized. “El Cuarto De Tula” showcases the multiple rhythms blended with the Spanish sounds and various melodic impulses that come and go. The song is alive and full of diverse inputs. Just as Ortiz (2001) notes, this music coincides with the Old World customs and celebratory moments connected to the Spanish Catholic religious festivities—and the sounds of the songs are full of a kind of celebratory spirit: these are songs that would be performed to celebrate—not to mourn. They are songs that would be performed to honor a feast day, a saint, the Mother of God—and though they are not necessarily religiously-themed, the spirit that animates them is rich and full of this religious culture. This is evident in “El Cuarto De Tula” unlike in the other two songs by the Buena Vista Social Club. There is a spirit in the music that one could easily connect to festivities held in a town square. Farr (2003) describes this spirit very well for every festivity that actually occurs in Cuba: “Songs have to be rehearsed, dances perfected, complex choreography synchronized. For carnival, an explosion of rhythm, song, and spirit meant to lure every sentient being into its swirling vortex is a fierce competition as well as an unfolding of sensual dementia” (p. 207). This spirit is the essence of Cuban music: it is linked to the Old World influences that remained in Cuba—influences that were driven out of the U.S. when Spain gave up its claims to the area. In Cuba, those claims were never given up.
Thus Cuban music was able to develop in a manner that was wholly unique to its region and the cultural influences that appeared there. The Congo and Yoruba beats from the African jungles came over via the slave trade and those merged with the sensual, Arabian/Catholic impulses of the Iberian people: it all coalesced over time into a vibrant, heady, folksy, Latino melody underlain by Afro beats to create something entirely unheard anywhere else on earth. This was Cuban music.
Of course, there is something of the African religious culture in Cuban music as well. As Sublette (2007) shows, the slaves in Cuba did not have it easy by any means and their experiences served as the basis of the birth of Cuban music, too. They drew upon their African beliefs to comfort them at a time when they experienced an environment of death—but their particular African beliefs compelled them to make peace with death. They drew upon their religious tradition to use music and drums to control the forces of nature, to control the world around them and to effect a happy place for themselves. This merger of African and Spanish customs thus comes together to produce what today is known as Cuban music.
In conclusion, Cuban music is something quite distinct from the African-American blues and swing that emerged in the U.S. Cuban music retained a great deal of Old World Spanish-Catholic influence, which mixed with the African tribal customs and beats of the Yoruba and Congo people to bring a new musical style into existence. This style came from the experiences of the slaves and conquistadors in the region and came out of struggles for independence and for survival. They were deeply religious in tone and sensual in style. They were alive and upbeat while capable of being sorrowful, mixing the sorrowful and joyful and even the miraculous in a way that touched multiple cultures and evinced several dynamic influences.

References
Buena Vista Social Club. (2015). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNYOVEXJBBM
Farr, J. (2003). Rites of rhythm: The music of Cuba. Regan Books.
Ortiz, F. (2001). The Afro-Cuban festival Day of the Kings. Cuban Festivals: A
Century of Afro-Cuban Culture, JudithBettelheim (ed.), Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.First published1925.
Sublette, N. (2007). Cuba and its music: From the first drums to the mambo. Chicago
Review Press.