Fiesta Cubana: salsa, timba, guaracha and son mambo are four different things
Four Cuban dance styles that often share a playlist: how salsa, timba, guaracha and son mambo differ in bass, piano, arrangement density and what they ask of a dancer.
Salsa, timba, guaracha and son mambo are frequently listed together, but they are not interchangeable. Salsa is a New York arranging style over Cuban rhythm, timba is a denser Havana development with broken funk bass, guaracha is a fast bright verse and coro form, and son mambo is the older lineage both grew from.
Four labels, one family
A Cuban party playlist will happily put these four next to each other, and they do belong to the same family. But they behave differently on a floor and they ask different things of a listener, so it is worth being able to tell them apart.
Son mambo
Son is the base. Tres guitar or piano, bass, bongo, maracas, claves, and a structure that runs from a sung introduction into a montuno with call and answer. Son mambo describes son played with the mambo section developed and a horn line added. It is lighter than salsa, more transparent, and the tempo tends to be gentler. If a track sounds like salsa with the density turned down, it is usually son.
Guaracha
Quick, bright, often comic in its lyrics, built on rapid alternation between a sung verse and a short coro. Historically it came from Cuban theatre and it kept a theatrical quality: the humour is in the timing. In an instrumental context the guaracha feel shows up as a fast, light arrangement with plenty of space between horn hits.
Timba
The Havana development of the 1990s, and the most demanding of the four. The bass abandons the steady anticipated tumbao for broken, funk influenced lines. The piano montuno becomes far more chromatic. Arrangements stack sudden gear changes, called bloques, that the whole band hits together. Timba is harder to dance socially than salsa, which is precisely why Cuban dancers value it.
Salsa
The New York arranging tradition: harder brass, longer montunos, percussion mixed forward, tempo higher. Covered in full in the salsa guide, including the difference between salsa dura and salsa romantica.
A quick test
Listen to the bass. If it plays a steady anticipated tumbao, you are in salsa or son. If it breaks into irregular funk phrasing and drops out for whole bars, you are in timba. Then listen to the horns. Continuous stacked riffs point to salsa; sparse, sharp block hits that the whole band lands together point to timba; light, spaced figures point to son or guaracha.
The Fiesta Cubana playlist page covers when to put this on rather than what it is.