Changui, son and the road from Guantanamo to the world
Where son cubano came from: changui in the Guantanamo region, the marimbula, the move west to Havana, and how a rural form became a national and then international music.
Son came out of eastern Cuba, and its closest surviving ancestor is changui, a rural style from the Guantanamo region built on tres, bongo, guayo scraper, maracas and marimbula. When the form travelled west to Havana in the early twentieth century it acquired the septeto line up and the trumpet.
Changui
Changui is played in the far east of Cuba, in and around Guantanamo, and it is the closest thing to a living picture of what son grew out of. The ensemble is tres, bongo, guayo scraper, maracas and marimbula. The bongo in changui is not the polite martillo of the septetos; it is loud, improvisatory and dominant, closer to the role a quinto plays in rumba.
The rhythm is also less regularised. Changui does not organise itself around clave as strictly as later son does, and its phrasing has an angularity that got smoothed out on the way west.
The marimbula
The marimbula deserves attention because it explains a lot about Cuban bass playing. It is a large box lamellophone: metal tongues mounted on a resonating box, played by a musician sitting on it. It produces a small number of very low pitches with a percussive attack and no sustain.
A bass instrument that cannot sustain and has few available notes forces a particular kind of line: rhythmically placed, sparse, chosen for punch rather than for melodic movement. When the double bass replaced it, the style stayed. That is one of the reasons the anticipated tumbao sounds the way it does.
Going west
Son travelled to Havana in the early twentieth century, carried partly by soldiers and migrant workers. In the capital it met a professionalised music scene, picked up a guitar and eventually a trumpet, and settled into the sexteto and septeto formats that were recorded and exported. What was rural and regional became national, and then international.
The Afro-Cuban guide covers the folkloric traditions in the same lineage, and the salsa guide picks the story up at the point where New York enters it.