Los Muñequitos de Matanzas

On October 9, 1952 in the barrio of La Marina, city of Matanzas, Cuba, a group of young rumberos stopped off at their local tavern El Gallo after work.

Saldiguera and Virulilla who had sung in son septetos (‘septets’), brought that genre’s style of harmony singing to the group.

The drums were tuned much lower back then, sounding like funky bass lines, with the rhythmically elusive singing "floating" on top.

They cemented their position as one of Cuba's leading rumba ensembles with songs like "Óyelos de nuevo" and "La chismosa del solar", released in the early 1970s by EGREM.

Los Muñequitos quintero Jesús Alfonso's guaguancó "Congo yambumba" (1984) was recorded by Eddie Palmieri (1987),[5] and Grupo Vocal Sampling (1992).

In 1992 the American record company Qbadisc began releasing albums by Los Muñequitos on CD in the United States, followed by a tour of the country for the first time.

It was during this time that the group branched out and performed folkloric music and dance besides rumba, such as Lucumí, Palo, abakuá and conga.

In the late summer of 1994 Los Muñequitos joined the Cuban jazz ensemble Irakere on stage at the Banff Centre for the Arts to perform "Xiomara.

The melodic conversations of the two, lower-pitched congas (salidor and segundo), eventually evolved into an extremely fluid style, that was more an approach than a composite of specific parts.

In the late 1980s Los Muñequitos began incorporating break-downs, where the bottom end of the drum melody momentarily dropped out.