Son

The Cuban son is a musical and dance genre whose emergence as a nationally popular expressive form dates back to the 1910s. With roots in the eastern part of the island, son attracted the attention of not only musicians and dancers, but eventually poets, artists, and political leaders in Havana from the 1920s on. It surpassed the popularity of danzón, becoming the symbolic expression of Cuban national identity. Specifically, writers have identified son's syncretization of African and Spanish musical structures as symbolic of the nation's mestizaje, or racially mixed essence.

From its earliest history son music has been stylistically vibrant, spawning several closely related styles of Cuban and Latin popular music and dance. Ignacio Piñeiro of the internationally popular Septeto Nacional was the genre's first commercially prolific composer and innovative stylist. Piñeiro was followed by Arsenio Rodríguez, who standardized the use of the congas, piano, and trumpet section in son's original instrumental format. These and other innovations in son music led directly to the development of mambo in the 1940s and salsa music in the 1960s. Cuban and other musicians have continued to use son and other related Cuban forms as a source from which to develop new styles, including songo and, since the 1990s, timba.

See alsoMambo; Music: Popular Music and Dance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Garcia, David. Arsenio Rodriguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006.

Moore, Robin. Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

                                      David F. Garcia