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Són city Near the eastern end of Cuba, Santiago is a regional capital, a treasure house of history — and, Donna Yawching writes, the island’s most musical city. The soundtrack is driven by the rhythms of són, she learns — and the soul of Santiago is in its musicians’ fervour for their heritage
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n Calle Heredia, people are dancing. Swirling, swaying, shimmying: complicated patterns of movement turning sound into substance. Underlying it all, the driving rhythms of són, the music that defines Cuba’s eastern provinces. Santiago de Cuba, the regional capital, is beyond a doubt the island’s most musical city. It throbs, day and night, with everything from sexy salsa to romantic bolero; from primal drumming to intricate choral confections. Music — most of it live — exudes from bars, parks, concert halls, patios, even private homes. Rhythm, in this city, is life, and dancing is as inevitable as breathing. Not surprisingly, Santiago and the surrounding Oriente province are the birthplace of són (pronounced “song”), a genre which has branched out in multiple directions, the best known today being salsa. (Cubans, in fact, are somewhat dismissive of salsa, despite its worldwide popularity. “Soneros say that salsa doesn’t really exist,” declares Fernando Dewar, leader of the Septeto Santiaguero, a band which has won two Latin Grammy awards. “Salsa is a movement, not a genre. Són is the trunk of the tree.”)
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Every tree, of course, has roots; and these are what make Cuban music so rich. With its history of Spanish colonialism, the enslavement of Africans, and French immigration, the threads have wound together to create an intricate tapestry of sound that hearts and feet and hips cannot resist. From the soulful bolero to the wicked guaracha, the intimate trova to the compelling conga, the polyrhythms of the various Cuban musical traditions bring joy to a society where life is often hard.
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t the heart of it all, says Juan Carlos Berbes, a specialist at Santiago’s Museo de la Musica, is la trova — music born of one man and a guitar, the trovador, the cantante ambulante. “You could find him on a street corner, a park bench, a barbershop, under a balcony, anywhere.”
