Music of African heritage in Cuba

Members of some of these groups formed their own ethnic associations or cabildos, in which cultural traditions were conserved, including musical ones.

These religions, which had a similar but not identical structure, were known as Lucumi or Regla de Ocha if they derived from the Yoruba, Palo from Central Africa, Vodú from Haiti, and so on.

The term Santería was first introduced to account for the way African spirits were joined to Catholic saints, especially by people who were both baptized and initiated, and so were genuine members of both groups.

[7][8]All these African cultures had musical traditions, which survive erratically to the present day, not always in detail, but in the general style.

What unifies all genuine forms of African music is the unity of polyrhythmic percussion, voice (call-and-response) and dance in well-defined social settings, and the absence of melodic instruments of an Arabic or European kind.

Not until after the Second World War do we find detailed printed descriptions or recordings of African sacred music in Cuba.

The experiences were private to the initiated, until the work of the ethnologist Fernando Ortíz, who devoted a large part of his life to investigating the influence of African culture in Cuba.

The Congo cabildo uses yuka drums, as well as gallos (a form of song contest), makuta and mani dances.