NG La Banda
NG La Banda — Nueva Generación — is widely credited as the band that invented timba, building an entirely new genre from songo, funk, jazz, and Afro-Cuban ritual music between 1988 and the early 1990s.
About
José Luis "El Tosco" Cortés founded NG La Banda (Nueva Generación La Banda — New Generation The Band) in Havana in 1988, after years as a flutist and composer with Irakere, Cuba's premier jazz-fusion ensemble. The move from Irakere to NG La Banda was a deliberate descent from the concert hall to the street: Cortés wanted to take the musical sophistication he had developed alongside Chucho Valdés and apply it to raw, high-energy dance music.
The formula was unprecedented. NG La Banda's rhythm section combined songo's drum vocabulary with funk-influenced electric bass lines and a locked-in, aggressive pulse that had no real precedent in Cuban music. The brass arrangements were punishing — dense, dissonant, harmonically complex in ways that reflected Cortés's conservatory training while landing with the force of a street brawl. Over this, vocalists (early on including Isaac Delgado) delivered lyrics that were explicitly about Havana street life, sexual politics, and social conditions.
The 1989–1992 recordings are the foundational timba documents. "La Expresiva," "No Se Puede Tapar El Sol," "La Bruja" — these tracks established the genre's core characteristics: the rhythmic interlocking of conga, drum set, bass, and piano each occupying distinct rhythmic roles; the use of Afro-Cuban religious references (batá rhythms, Yoruba phrases) embedded in secular dance music; the extended mambo sections with their rapid-fire brass volleys.
NG La Banda also created a new relationship between the band and the dancer. The despelote — a style of dancing that emerged in direct response to timba's rhythmic complexity — developed on Havana dance floors in response specifically to NG La Banda's music. The band's performances were events; the dancing they provoked was controversial enough to attract government attention.
El Tosco's flute playing is a signature element. Where the flute in charanga is elegant and melodic, in NG La Banda it is aggressive, chromatic, and often used as a rhythmic weapon. His approach extended what he had developed in Irakere and gave timba one of its most distinctive timbres.
NG La Banda has operated intermittently since the 1990s, with various lineup changes, but El Tosco remains the creative center. Their influence on every subsequent timba band — Charanga Habanera, Bamboleo, Paulito FG, David Calzado's groups — is direct and acknowledged.
Key Recordings
- "La Expresiva" — early defining timba track
- "No Se Puede Tapar El Sol"
- "La Bruja"
- En la calle — foundational album
- En directo desde el patio de mi casa — landmark live recording
The contradanza is the first music that truly sounded Cuban: a European dance form into which 19th-century Cuban composers worked the habanera rhythm and the cinquillo. Contradanza is the name of both the music and the dance.
Lees meer >Dances
- Danzón – The quintessential Cuban ballroom dance, elegant and formal, often seen as the "national dance of Cuba."
- Danzonete – A sung variant of danzón that became popular in the 1920s–30s.
- Cha-cha-chá – Created in the 1950s by Enrique Jorrín while playing with a charanga; specifically designed for charanga orchestras.
- Pachanga – A playful dance and rhythm from the late 1950s/early 1960s, closely linked to charanga bands.
- Mambo (in its earlier Cuban form) – Before the big-band New York mambo, charangas also played early mambo-style danzones.
- Charanga is a Cuban ensemble style and musical tradition that dates back to the early 20th century. It became especially popular in the 1940s–50s and played a crucial role in the evolution of salsa, timba, and Latin jazz.
Lees meer >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.
Lees meer >Songo is a Cuban music and dance style that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It bridges Afro-Cuban rhythms with modern influences like funk, rock, and jazz.
Lees meer >Cuban Dances Originating in Havana
Havana, the cultural heartbeat of Cuba, played a central role in the creation and evolution of several iconic Cuban dances. Some were born directly in the capital, while others were transformed there into the forms we know today.
Lees meer >The horn layer over the montuno: short, powerful and rhythmically intense riffs that the horns lay over the ongoing groove, building energy toward the climax of the song.
Lees meer >Despelote is the most explosive individual dance style in timba — a full-body release of energy that happens during the high-intensity bomba sections of a timba song.
Lees meer >Egungun is the Yoruba masquerade tradition honoring the collective ancestors — the Egun, the dead who remain present and active in the lives of the living. In Cuba, the Egungun tradition survived within the broader world of Santería (Regla de Ocha) and the related Arará and Abakuá communities, though in a form shaped by the specific conditions of the island.
Lees meer >Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean and the birthplace of some of the world's most influential music and dance traditions. African, Spanish, and French cultural streams collided here over centuries of colonial history, producing an extraordinary creative culture that exported itself across the globe.
Lees meer >EGREM (Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales) is Cuba's state recording company, founded in 1964 after the Revolution nationalized all private recording labels. Its main facility, Estudios Areíto in Havana, is where virtually every important Cuban recording from the Revolution era was made.
Lees meer >The drum set (batería) is the Western kit with kick drum, snare, toms, hi-hat and cymbals. In Cuban dance music it became important with the songo of Los Van Van, and it is now a fixed part of timba.
Lees meer >The batá drums are a set of three double-headed hourglass-shaped drums central to Yoruba religious tradition and Afro-Cuban sacred music (Lucumí / Santería).
Lees meer >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.
Lees meer >The 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 electric bass became a lead voice — fiery, improvisational, and deeply integrated with the percussion.
Lees meer >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.
Lees meer >The flute is the lead voice of the charanga, from Antonio Arcaño's wooden five-key flute to Orquesta Aragón. In timba it returns with bright melodies, call-and-response with the singers, and virtuoso solos that cut through the dense rhythm section.
Lees meer >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.
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