Reggaetón
Reggaetón moves have become a regular part of timba dancing. You see them mostly during the bomba and other heavy, bare moments in the montuno, when dancers break away from their partner.
Choreography: Marta Kutyńska (The Cuban Place)
🇨🇺 Reggaetón in Cuba
Since the 2000s reggaetón has been hugely popular in Cuba and drew part of the timba audience away. Some timba bands responded by adding reggaetón or rap elements to their songs; others stayed with pure timba. That mix also gave rise to cubatón (reggaetón a lo cubano): reggaetón with Cuban percussion, salsa and timba.
💃 On the dance floor
- When: mostly in the bomba or another bare gear, where the groove is heavy and the piano drops out.
- How: apart from your partner (suelta), with isolations of hips, chest and shoulders.
- Back to your partner: when the band starts a new gear or a new coro, you pick up your partner again.
📝 Sources
Timba dancing is Cuban popular dance at its most intense — improvisational, Afro-Cuban in its movement vocabulary, and directly responsive to the music's gear changes, coros, and rhythmic explosions.
Lees meer >Suelta is dancing apart from your partner, solo — in son, casino and timba. In timba it is more grounded and contained than despelote — a cooler, more controlled individual expression that still responds directly to the music.
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 >In the 20th century New York was the second home of Cuban music. Here Afro-Cuban jazz and the mambo craze of the Palladium Ballroom were born, and later salsa.
Lees meer >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.
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 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 bomba is the peak of a timba song: a heavy, funky groove in which the bass takes the lead, the piano steps back, and the conga and timbal play at full power. For dancers it is the moment for despelote and free movement.
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- Who sings it Chorus (the coristas, sometimes the horns too)
- Purpose Repetition, hook and rhythmic anchor
- Characteristics Short, catchy, often syncopated
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