Son-moderno - genre

Timba

Timba is the music this site is dedicated to exploring. It emerged as a distinct genre in the late 1980s and crystallized in the early 1990s — born in a moment of social crisis, built on the full accumulated history of Cuban music, and still evolving today.

Casa de la Trova

The Casa de la Trova in cuba"> Santiago de Cuba is the spiritual home of Cuban traditional music — Son, Bolero, Changüí, and Trova. Founded in 1968 on Calle Heredia in the heart of Santiago's historic center, it has been the gathering place for the city's musicians for over half a century.

Percussion Instruments

Cuban music is built on percussion. The extraordinary density and variety of Cuban rhythmic culture reflects the meeting of West and Central African drumming traditions with Spanish, Haitian, and creole musical practices over four centuries. The instruments below form the core percussive vocabulary heard across Son, Rumba, Timba, Danzón, and their descendants.

Conga

The conga (also called tumbadora) is the primary hand drum of Cuban music and the rhythmic backbone of timba, son, rumba, and salsa.

Bongo

The bongo is a pair of small open-bottomed drums played with fingers and palms. It originated in eastern Cuba and became one of the defining percussion voices of son and timba.

Güiro

The güiro is a notched gourd scraped with a stick or fork to produce a rasping, rhythmic sound. It is a standard feature of charanga orchestras and is central to danzón, cha-cha-chá, son, and salsa.

Timbales

The timbales ( pailas criollas) are a pair of shallow, metal-shell drums mounted on a stand, played with wooden sticks. They are the rhythmic engine of charanga orchestras and play a critical role in timba.

Tres

The tres is a Cuban guitar-like instrument with three pairs (courses) of strings. It is the defining melodic-rhythmic instrument of son cubano and its ancestor genres.

Guitar

The Spanish guitar arrived in Cuba with the colonizers and became the seed of Cuban music, blending with African rhythms. From inspiring the tres to shaping son, conjuntos, and even modern timba, its influence runs through every note of Cuba’s musical history.

Piano

The piano is the harmonic and rhythmic heart of Cuban popular music. In timba, it is one of the most demanding and expressive instruments in the ensemble.

Electric Bass

The bass"> electric bass is the dominant bass instrument in timba and modern Cuban popular music, replacing the upright bass from the 1970s onward. In timba specifically, the bass"> electric bass became a lead voice — fiery, improvisational, and deeply integrated with the percussion.

Violin

In timba (the Cuban genre that evolved from son and salsa in the late 1980s and 1990s), the violin is not a core instrument, but it does appear in interesting ways:

The Bass

Timba, the explosive and rhythmically rich genre of Cuban dance music, transformed how the bass functions in popular music. In Timba, the bass is not just foundational — it’s fiery, funky, and free.

Trombones

The trombone is the defining brass voice of timba. Where earlier Cuban popular music relied primarily on trumpets, timba shifted the brass weight toward trombones — giving the music a deeper, darker, more aggressive horn sound.

Trombones

The trombone is the defining brass voice of timba. Where earlier Cuban popular music relied primarily on trumpets, timba shifted the brass weight toward trombones — giving the music a deeper, darker, more aggressive horn sound.

Timba music

A Cuban popular dance music genre that emerged in the 1980s–90s

• emerged in the 1980s–90s
• influenced by songo, rumba, funk, blues, jazz, pop, rock and Afro-Cuban rhythms.
• Known for complex rhythm shifts, aggressive bass lines, and high energy that push dancers to improvise.