Cuban Urban Music

Overview

The Caribbean, and particularly Cuba, has produced some of the most internationally influential urban popular music to come out of Latin America. This music is heavily indebted to the strong African presence in the region and the interaction of African and European musicians.

Various important Cuban genres evolved during the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the danzón, derived from the European contradanza. Both are demonstrated and discussed by Hilario Durán in the video. Originally, the danzón was performed by large orchestras of European percussion, wind and stringed instruments, or European salon instrumentation—flute, piano, bass, violins—accompanied by Cuban percussion. By the end of the 19th century, however, Afro-Cuban and European musical elements had been combined in the danzón. Black danzón bands added greater syncopation into the more restrained European style, and often concluded a piece with a rhythmically animated section comprising improvised solos. This improvised section resembles the montuno, the second more animated section of one of Cuba’s most influential of genres, the son. 

The Cuban son is an Afro-Hispanic genre with two major sections. The first section, like so much Latin American mestizo (ethnically or culturally mixed) music, is in strophic form with a sequence of verses, or verses and refrain. The second part is the montuno section, which exhibits African musical principles more clearly. The montuno involves call-and-response singing over a short harmonic ostinato (short continually repeated phrase). The performance becomes more rhythmically animated, and instrumental improvisation comes to the fore. Hilario Durán demonstrates these features of a montuno.

The instruments used to play sones earlier in this century combined European or mestizo stringed instruments such as the tres (a small Cuban guitar variant with three courses of two or three strings each) with Afro-Cuban percussion. The rhythmic underpinning was the clave pattern. By the 1930s, the son had become the most popular dance genre in Havana, and it was soon to have a major impact internationally in the 1940s and 1950s.

Another important source for Cuban popular music was the Afro-Cuban rumba guaguanco. It shares features with and parallels the development of son yet sounds more directly African because of the instrumentation. By the late 19th century, rumba guaguanco was performed by a lead singer and chorus accompanied only by drums and rhythm sticks. Like the son, the rumba guaguanco has two main sections. Typically, after a brief vocal introduction, the main verses and chorus refrains are sung in the first part followed by a montuno: a call-and-response section in which the chorus repeats a single melodic phrase in alternation with the lead singer’s improvisations.

From core styles such as these, Cuba has given birth to a whole range of genres that have had a profound effect internationally including the mambo, cha-cha-cha, the bolero, and later styles of rumba. The clave pattern can be heard in popular music styles throughout the world.

Also, from the lineage of the son, salsa music has currently become one of the most widely diffused urban popular styles in Latin America. Originally developing in Caribbean diaspora communities of New York, salsa has spread to cities throughout North and Latin America with centres of activity in Miami, Los Angeles, Caracas, and Cali.

Musician

Hilario Durán

Cuban born Hilario Durán grew up in Havana in a musical family. He began working as a professional musician in Cuba’s Los Papa Cun­-Cun Ensemble and in a variety of musical formats. In the 70’s, Durán was chosen by star Cuban musician, Chucho Valdés as his successor in Cuba’s most modern big band, Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. He has toured worldwide and performed with Dizzy Gillespie and Michel Legrand, among many others. For nine years he was pianist/keyboardist, arranger, and musical director for the well-known band led by Arturo Sandoval. He immigrated to Canada in 1998 and lives in Toronto.

He is a Grammy-nominated and multi-Juno award winner, a Canadian National Jazz Award winner, and the recipient of the 2007 Chico O’Farrill Lifetime Achievement Award from Latin Jazz USA for his outstanding contributions to Afro-Cuban Jazz and Latin Jazz. He teaches at Humber College in Toronto.

Terminology

An understanding of the following terms would be helpful before proceeding with the Video Content.

• Clave
• Danzón
• Contradanza
• Son
• Montuno
• Strophic form
• Tres
• Timba
• Bembe

Video Content

Hilario discusses his career as a musician in Cuba and discusses and demonstrates some of the major urban popular music styles in Cuba, as well as various forms and practices such as montuno, clave, contradanza, danzón, rumba, and timba. He also describes changes in Cuban popular music.

Transcript: Cuban Urban Music

Video Time Cues

• 0:06 Musical influences and training
• 7:30 Learns classical music at National Conservatory
• 9:00 Played clarinet in Cuban military band
• 10:10 Festival competitions with regional military bands
• 11:19 Played Cuban, classical, original compositions
• 11:44 Meets many musicians
• 12:10 Left the band in 1973
• 12:40 Played in professional band/Original pieces/Rumbas
• 13:00 Leader/Orally dictated original music to musicians
• 14:03 Main genres: son montuno, rumba
• 14:49 “El Manisero”/“The Peanut Vendor”-son-pregon style
• 16:34 Demonstrates “El Mamisero”
• 19:57 Dance music
• 20:09 Played in dance halls, radio, television, theatres
• 21:04 Montuno
• 21:43 Demonstration of montuno
• 22:25 Continues discussion of montuno
• 22:50 Montuno, clave and tres
• 25:27 Clave
• 26:50 Montuno patterns and practices
• 29:30 Montuno and danzón
• 31:40 Danzón structure including montuno
• 32:45 Cinquillo rhythm for danzón
• 35:10 Demonstration of danzón
• 40:04 Discussion of contradanza
• 42:20 Demonstration of contradanza
• 44:21 Repertoire: son montuno/danzón/rumba/cha cha cha
• 45:35 Demonstration of rumba
• 48:14 Sub for Chucho Valdes/Cuban Orchestra-Modern Music
• 50:46 Repertoire: Cuban/jazz/backing singers/classical
• 51:43 Learning by ear. Learning to compose and arrange
• 53:18 Style characteristics of Cuban music
• 55:10 Post-revolution ban of American dance music & jazz
• 56:23 Importance of jazz
• 57:30 Jazz relative to Cuban music in Durán’s playing
• 58:18 Went back to Cuban music years later
• 58:57 Illegal to play jazz after revolution
• 59:50 Government changed its policy later
• 1:00:30 Pop music in Canada in the 1990s
• 1:01:34 Havana jazz festival but no jazz schools in Cuba
• 1:02:59 Government supports jazz/support revolution
• 1:03:31 Fusion between jazz and Cuban music
• 1:05:00 Late 1960s and later development
• 1:07:00 Clave
• 1:09:10 Demonstrates at piano
• 1:10:00 Older three-two clave/modern two-three clave
• 1:11:42 Clave matches montuno
• 1:11:56 The wrong clave
• 1:12:23 Montuno with the two clave beats
• 1:13:40 African music connected to Cuban music. Bembe
• 1:16:08 Subdivisions of beats in threes
• 1:16:48 Cuban bembe
• 1:18:25 Triplet subdivision of the beat
• 1:21:30 Fluidity of duple & triple subdivision in montuno
• 1:22:16 Bass lines. History. Demonstrations
• 1:24:40 Modern bass lines. Timba
• 1:27:10 Interaction between band members
• 1:28:34 Bass line connection to clave and conga   
• 1:30:43 Feature of the montuno section of a danzón
• 1:32:24 Features of rumba/Call-and-response/Improvisation
• 1:35:10 Montuno and dancing
• 1:35:50 Montuno and clave
• 1:36:20 Clave inside and outside of Cuba. Controversy
• 1:38:28 Timba as a genre of modern Cuban music
• 1:40:00 Continual development of Cuban music
• 1:47:06 Mixing of Spanish and African music. Haiti
• 1:51:25 Relation to early jazz
• 1:52:35 Hispanic influence
• 1:54:20 Demonstration of original piece/Hispanic influence

Suggested Activities and Assessments

Terms

Create a limited-access wiki of the terms and their definitions listed in the Terminology section above. Students can work individually to create their own “wiki” as text files, or in teams (e.g., through a course website). Students research the meanings, and if relevant, the history of these terms.

Participation

1. Clave
   Central to Afro-Cuban music is the clave, both the rhythm and the instrument. Ask students to perform the three-two and two-three clave rhythm.
2. Quiz: Game Show
   Name that form: montuno or not?
   The instructor plays various examples from the video or other sources, some of which are montunos, some of which are not. Students must determine which are montunos and why they think so.

Research

Hilario mostly talks about urban popular music. One way to think about popular music is that it is associated with mass media. Although Hilario touches on this in the video, he doesn’t provide details. How did mass media in Cuba and outside of Cuba inform the development of Cuban popular music?