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A European drew this illustration of Afro-Caribbean slaves dancing in 1833. The slaves are accompanied by various percussion instruments, including drums and gourd rattles. Modern Cuban music and dance incorporates many traditional West African influences.

European opera companies toured in Havana—which by the turn of the 19th century was the third-largest city in the Western Hemisphere, behind only Mexico City and New York. White Cubans also enjoyed such fashionable European music and dance exports as the quadrille and the waltz. For the island’s blacks, known now as Afro-Cubans, drum- ming was at the center of music and dance. That had been true in the West African cultures from which most of the enslaved Afro-Cubans had come. Those cultures had developed percus- sion-based rhythms of startling variety and intricacy. Afro- Cubans kept alive this inheritance from their ancestral homes.

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Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations