Son cubano.
The story
Son took shape in Oriente, the eastern end of Cuba, in the late 1800s. It joined Spanish song forms and the guitar family with rhythms carried by enslaved Africans and their descendants, above all the Bantu-derived drumming of the region.
By the 1920s it had reached Havana, where groups like the Sexteto Habanero and Ignacio Piñeiro's Septeto Nacional made it the sound of the city: tres, guitar, bongó, bass, maracas, claves and voices, later a trumpet.
In the 1940s Arsenio Rodríguez expanded the band into the conjunto, adding the conga, piano and more trumpets, and stretched the montuno into the long vamp that salsa was later built on.
The son clave, 3-2
Three strokes in the first bar, two in the second. The bass never plays on one: it anticipates the next chord on the & of 2 and on 4.
Hear it on the home page
Start with the clave.
Pick an instrument, add Son Cubano as your style, and play it with the band.
