Country of origin
Cuba music genres
Explore music genre guides with documented origins in Cuba.
7 genre guides
1800Balada and Bolero
A blended tag for romantic Spanish-language song traditions, anchored by the Cuban bolero and carried forward by later balada and Latin pop crossover recordings.
1850Bolero
A Cuban-born romantic song tradition that matured into a pan-Latin standard, with especially strong Mexican reinvention and a long afterlife in trio singing and pop revival.
1900Son cubano
A foundational Cuban genre with eastern-rooted origins, son cubano carries a relaxed but driving swing that helped shape later Latin dance music. The modern revival around Buena Vista Social Club kept its older songs in circulation for new listeners.
1947Afro-Cuban jazz
A New York-born meeting of Cuban rhythm and jazz language, Afro-Cuban jazz comes across as bold, layered, and built for motion. The documented record points to the 1940s, with Bauzá, Machito, Gillespie, and Pozo at the center of the story. (americanhistory.si.edu)
1947Mambo
A Cuba-rooted dance genre that grew out of danzón, then burst into international popularity through Pérez Prado’s brassy, crowd-moving orchestral sound.
1967Salsa
A broad, well-documented umbrella term for New York–centered Afro-Caribbean dance music that crystallized in the 1960s and 1970s.
1987Timba
Timba is a Cuban genre that sharpened earlier popular dance music into something more elastic, percussive, and impatient. Its best-documented early center of gravity is the Havana scene around NG La Banda, with Los Van Van and Charanga Habanera helping turn the style into a broader movement.