The 8 best Son Cubano tracks of all time
Son Cubano
Cuba's foundational popular form, out of the eastern hills and into Havana by the 1920s: Spanish song over African percussion, organised around the clave and the montuno — the call-and-response vamp everything else is built to arrive at.
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Compay Segundo / Chan Chan
Written by a man in his eighties who said it came to him in a dream, and then made globally famous by the Buena Vista Social Club a decade later. Four chords, and no one tires of them.
Rita Montaner / El Manisero
A peanut vendor's street cry turned into a son-pregón, and the record that set off a rumba craze across America and Europe. Cuban music's first global export.
Joseíto Fernández / Guantanamera
A guajira whose verses were improvised nightly on the radio, later fitted with José Martí's poetry. Probably the most sung Cuban melody there is.
Arsenio Rodríguez / Bruca Maniguá
The blind tres player who added a piano, a conga and a second trumpet and turned son into the conjunto format. Everything salsa does structurally, Arsenio did first.
Septeto Nacional / Échale Salsita
Ignacio Piñeiro's septet at the point the form settled into its classic line-up. The title supplied a word that a New York industry later took for itself.
Ibrahim Ferrer / Dos Gardenias
A bolero sung by a man who had been shining shoes when Ry Cooder found him. Whatever one thinks of the Buena Vista project, this performance is not in question.
Bobby Capó / Quizás, Quizás, Quizás
Osvaldo Farrés wrote it without being able to read music. A bolero of total economy, and one of the handful of Cuban songs everybody can hum without knowing where it came from.
Faustino Oramas / Candela
El Guayabero, filthy and delighted about it, working the double meanings that were always half the point of son lyrics. Recorded when he was seventy-four.