The African slaves and their descendants made many percussion instruments and preserved rhythms they had known in their homeland. The most important instruments were the drums. Also important are the claves, two short hardwood batons, and the cajón, a wooden box, originally made from crates. Claves are still used often, and cajons ("cajones") were used widely during periods when the drum was banned.
The great instrumental contribution of the Spanish was their guitar, but even more important was the tradition of European musical notation and techniques of musical composition.
Fernando Ortíz described Cuba's musical innovations as arising from the interplay between African slaves settled on large sugar plantations and Spanish or Canary Islanders who grew tobacco on small farms.
The African beliefs and practices certainly influenced Cuba's music. Polyrhythmic percussion is an inherent part of African life & music, as melody is part of European music. Also typical is syncopation, which is heard in the "cinquillo", a basic rhythm of the habanera, the danzón, the Argentine tango and other dances.
Also, in African tradition, percussion is joined to song and dance, and to a particular social setting. It is not simply entertainment added to life, it "is" life. The result of the meeting of European and African cultures is that most Cuban popular music is creolized (fused). This creolization of Cuban life has been happening for a long time, and by the 20th century, elements of African belief, music and dance were well integrated into popular and folk forms.
Cuban music has been immensely influential in other countries, contributing not only to the development of jazz and salsa, but also to Argentinian tango, Ghanaian highlife, West African afrobeat, and Spanish Nuevo flamenco.
The Cathedrals of the old capital, Santiago de Cuba, and Havana, both employed fine musicians and choir-masters. They composed, taught and directed. This helped the development of all kinds of music. In the 19th century, Manuel Saumell (1818–1870), was the father of Cuban criole musical development. He helped transform the European contradanza by adding African rhythmical elements, and had a hand in the habanera, and the danzon, two typically Cuban dance forms.
During the middle years of the 19th century, a young American musician came to Havana: Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), whose father was a Jewish businessman from London, and his mother a white creole of French Catholic background. Gottschalk was brought up mostly by his black grandmother and nurse Sally, both from Dominique. He was a piano prodigy who had listened to the music and seen the dancing in Congo Square, New Orleans from childhood. His period in Cuba lasted from 1853 to 1862, with visits to Puerto Rico and Martinique squeezed in. He composed many famous pieces which were genuinely Cuban, as they drew on traditions of both whites and blacks.
In February 1860 Gottschalk produced a huge work "La nuit des tropiques" in Havana. The work used about 250 musicians and a choir of 200 singers plus a drum group from Santiago de Cuba. He produced another huge concert the following year, with new material. These shows probably dwarfed anything seen in the island before or since, and no doubt were unforgettable for those who attended.
It was Ignacio Cervantes (1847–1905), who was probably most influenced by Gottschalk. Trained in Paris, he did much to assert a sense of Cuban musical nationalism in his compositions. Aaron Copland once referred to him as a "Cuban Chopin" because of his Chopinesque piano compositions. Cervantes' reputation today rests almost solely upon his famous forty-one "Danzas Cubanas", of which Carpentier said "occupy the place that the "Norwegian Dances" of Grieg or the "Slavic Dances" of Dvořák occupy in the musics of their respective countries".
From the 18th century to modern times, popular theatrical formats used, and gave rise to, music and dance. In addition to staging some European operas and operettas, Cuban composers gradually developed ideas which better suited their creole audience. Recorded music was the way for Cuban music to reach the world. The most recorded artist in Cuba up to 1925 was a singer at the "Alhambra", Adolfo Colombo. Records show he recorded about 350 numbers between 1906 and 1917, of which very few survive today.
The first theatre in Havana opened in 1776. The first Cuban-composed opera appeared in 1807. Musical theater was hugely important in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Radio, which began in Cuba in 1922, helped the growth of popular music because it provided publicity and a new source of income for the artists.
Zarzuela is a small-scale light operetta format. Starting off with imported Spanish content, it developed into a running commentary on Cuba's social and political events and problems. A string of front-rank composers, such as Ernesto Lecuona, produced a series of hits for the theatres in Havana. Great stars like the "vedette" Rita Montaner, who could sing, play the piano, dance and act, were the Cuban equivalents of Mistinguett and Josephine Baker in Paris.
Cuban "Bufo" theatre is a form of comedy, ribald and satirical. It uses stock types that might be found anywhere in the country. Bufo had its origin around 1800–1815: Francisco Covarrubias 'the caricaturist' (1775–1850) was its creator. Gradually, the comic types threw off their European models and became more and more creolized and Cuban. Alongside, the music followed. Slang from slave barracks and poor barrios found its way into lyrics:
The guaracha is a genre of rapid tempo and with lyrics. It originated in Bufo comic theatre, and during the early 20th century was often played in the brothels of Havana. The lyrics were full of slang, and dwelt on events and people in the news.
The contradanza is an historically important dance. It arrived in Cuba in the late 18th century from Europe. The contradanza is a communal sequence dance, with the dance figures in a set pattern. The tempo and style of the music was bright and fairly fast. The earliest Cuban composition of a contradanza is "San Pascual bailon", published in 1803. The Cubans developed a number of creolized version, which is an early example of the influence of African tradition in the Caribbean. Most of the musicians were black or mulatto: even early in the 19th century there were many freed slaves and mixed race persons living in Cuban towns.
The contradanza supplanted the minuet as the most popular dance until from 1842 on, it gave way to the habanera, a quite different style.
This, the child of the contradanza, was also danced in lines or squares. It was also a brisk form of music and dance which could be in double or triple time. This type of dance was eventually replaced by the danzón, which was, like the habanera, much slower and more sedate.
The habanera developed out of the contradanza in the early 19th century. Its great novelty was that it was "sung", as well as played and danced. Its development was at least partly due to the influence of French-speaking immigrants. The Haitian revolution of 1791 led to many colonial French and their slaves fleeing to Oriente. The "cinquillo" is one important rhythmical pattern which made its first appearance at this time.
The dance style of the habanera is slower and more stately than the danza; by the 1840s there were habaneras written, sung and danced in Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Spain. Since about 1900 the habanera has been a relic dance; but the music has a period charm, and there are some famous compositions, such as "Tu", versions of which have been recorded many times.