One of the greatest son composers — Ignacio Piñeiro founded the Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñeiro, the ensemble that helped define the son septeto sound and carried it to international audiences in the late 1920s.
Piñeiro was a bassist and singer who grew up in the Afro-Cuban community of Havana, deeply connected to both rumba and son traditions. His Septeto Nacional, founded in 1927, added trumpet to the son sextet format — a move that proved decisive in shaping the genre's sound and introduced the call-and-response between trumpet and voices that became central to son.
His compositions include Échale salsita — one of the first pieces to use the word salsa in a Cuban musical context — and dozens of other son classics. He represented Cuba at the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition in Seville, bringing son to European audiences for the first time. Échale salsita influenced George Gershwin's later Cuban Overture.