Salon History

In the salons of the 19th century, European group dances took on an African rhythm in Cuba. From contradanza through danza to danzón: in three steps, the first truly Cuban dance music was born.

From European group dance to Cuban rhythm

The contradanza is the Spanish version of the 18th-century French contredanse, which itself descends from the English country dance. Exactly how it reached Cuba is uncertain. Alejo Carpentier pointed to French refugees from the Haitian Revolution (1791–1803); other musicologists think it arrived decades earlier, directly from Spain, France or England. The oldest surviving Cuban contradanza, San Pascual Bailón, dates from 1803.

By the mid-19th century the contradanza had absorbed the African tresillo rhythm: the first written music rhythmically based on an African pattern. All classes danced it, and nearly every Cuban composer wrote contradanzas. The best known was Manuel Saumell (1817–1870).

Danza and danzón

In the second half of the century the danza dominated. Musically it was the same as the contradanza (the name is probably a contraction of it), but it was danced differently. From the 1870s the danzón took over. In 1879 Las alturas de Simpson by Miguel Faílde was performed in Matanzas, the piece regarded as the start of the danzón.

With the danzón the orchestra changed too. The orquesta típica with brass, clarinet, violins and timpani gave way to the lighter charanga: flute, violins, piano, double bass, timbales and güiro. The danzón follows a fixed form (ABAC), and during the recurring introduction, the paseo, dancers stop for a moment, chat, and start again.

Critics found the danzón scandalous: couples danced close together, and classes and races mixed on the dance floor. Even so, it became Cuba's main popular music until the son arrived in the 1920s, and it is still the official national dance.

Genres in this era

  • Contradanza
    The contradanza was the first European dance that truly became Cuban: under African influence it grew into something of its own. It is the starting point of the Cuban salon dance lineage that would eventually produce danzón, mambo, and cha-cha-chá.
  • Danza
    The danza was the evolutionary step between contradanza and danzón — a more intimate, more Cubanized couple's dance that dominated Havana's salons in the second half of the 19th century.
  • Danzón
    Danzón, Cuba's first national dance: Miguel Faílde's Las alturas de Simpson, Matanzas, 1 January 1879, and how it led to mambo, cha-cha-chá and timba.

On to the next era

The danzón already held the seeds of what came next. José Urfé added a swinging, son-influenced montuno in 1910, Aniceto Díaz added vocals in 1929 (the danzonete), and Orestes López wrote the first mambo section in 1938. Read on under son and big bands.

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