City on the southern coast of Cuba. Its cathedral was founded in 1522, and in 1544 the mestizo Miguel Velázquez was maestro de capilla. Because of French privateers in 1553, assault by British troops in 1662 and an earthquake in 1675, no early sources of music from Santiago survive. Domingo de Flores was appointed cathedral music director when the capilla was re-established in 1682, among his successors the most important composers were the Havana-born Esteban Salas y Castro (1725–1803; maestro 1764–1803) and the Santiago-born Cratilio Guerra (1834–96; maestro 1866–9 and 1875–8). The first Santiago imprint was the text of the Christmas villancicos set by Salas in 1793; in 1961 the cathedral music archive of 158 works still contained 46 of his festive vernacular works dated between 1783 and 1800. He also composed an extensive Latin repertory. Juan Nicolás de Villavicencio was cathedral organist from 1759 to 1779; his successor, Diego Hierrezuelo, was trained by Salas. In 1812 Juan París (1759–1845) succeeded Salas.
In the 1790s French planters who had fled from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) founded the first theatre for opera production in the Calle de Santo Tomás; Grétry’s Zémire et Azor was produced there on 19 March 1800, followed by other operas from the contemporary French repertory. The Coliseo de Marina y Barracones served as the town theatre from 1823 to 1844. In 1851 the Teatro de la Reina opened, with a season including Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor and Ernani; in the same year Mozart’s Requiem was sung in the cathedral for the first time, with an orchestra of 60 and a chorus of 42.
The Sociedad Filarmónica de Isabel II, active from 1832 to 1844, was succeeded in 1845 by the more prestigious Sociedad Filarmónica de Cuba. Laureano Fuentes Matons (1825–98), the leading 19th-century composer and music historian born in Santiago, played the Carnaval de Venecia at the inaugural concert of the latter society on 5 August 1846. His one-act opera La hija de Jefte (to a libretto by Antonio Arnao) was the first opera by a native Cuban performed in Cuba.
Gottschalk gave five triumphant concerts at Santiago in 1854, cooperating, as was his custom in Latin America, with leading local artists. In that same year a Spanish touring company gave five zarzuelas, beginning with Hernando’s El duende on 18 July. Gottschalk returned with Adelina Patti in 1857. José White, the leading Cuban violin virtuoso of the 19th century, gave his first Santiago recital on 5 March 1860, and returned to play in the Teatro Principal on 20 February 1875 and 9 January 1879.
Apart from those already named, the main local composers in Santiago before 1940 were Francisco Hierrezuelo (1763–1824), Silvano Boudet (1825–63), Rafael Salcedo (1844–1917), Ramón Figueroa (1862–1928) and Rodolfo Hernández (1856–1937). In 1961 works by all of these were available for study in the Museo Municipal ‘Emilio Bacardí Moreau’, founded in 1899 by the magnate Bacardí (1844–1922). Among Santiago-born composers active during Castro’s epoch, Harold Gramatges (b 1918) studied at Tanglewood with Copland, served in 1961–5 as Cuban ambassador in France, and in 1966 organized the music section of the Casa de las Américas. From 1962 Santiago was the seat of the annual Festival Nacional de Coros.
Santiago de Cuba and surrounding regions have been widely influential in the development of dynamic forms of traditional and popular music. Musical influences brought to the area by refugees of the Haitian revolution in the 1790s eventually led to the development of the Cuban contradanza, danza and danzón, with their characteristic cinquillo rhythms. These genres (especially the danzón) emerged during struggles for independence from Spain in the 19th century and are considered to be the first forms of national musical expression in Cuba. Performers of Afro-Haitian ancestry have perpetuated other styles of music derived from Haiti as well, most notably the tumba francesa. The influence of light opera on the working classes of Santiago is evident in their performances of vieja trova, a major musical force at the turn of the century that contributed to the emergence of the bolero and related forms throughout Latin America. Composer and guitarist José ‘Pepe’ Sánchez (1856–1918) was crucial to this process, reinterpreting the triple-metre Spanish bolero in a slower 2/4 time and influencing the artistic development of younger trovadores such as Sindo Garay, Rosendo Ruiz and Manuel Corona.
Santiago's carnival band traditions are arguably the most vibrant on the island, incorporating unique percussive rhythms and instruments such as the corneta china, a loud double-reed instrument brought to the island by Chinese indentured servants. Santiago's carnivals take place during the summer months, as opposed to those celebrated in Havana, and have been held every year despite the widespread economic difficulties experienced since 1989. Finally, the Cuban son, the most popular form of musical expression on the island since the 1920s, also developed in the Santiago area. Originally a regional genre associated with Afro-Cuban farmers, the son became popular throughout the island from the second decade of the 20th century. A highly syncretic form of expression that manifests both African- and Spanish-derived stylistic traits, it has become a central metaphor for national identity. Rhythms and percussion patterns derived from the son have been the seminal force behind the emergence of the mambo, modern salsa and Latin jazz. In terms of its international influence, son from the Santiago area is one of the most significant musical forms to have emerged in the 20th century.
L. Fuentes: Las artes en Santiago de Cuba (Santiago de Cuba, 1893)
P. Hernández Balaguer: Catálogo de música de los archivos de la catedral de Santiago de Cuba y del Museo Barcardí (Havana, 1961)
P. Hernández Balaguer: ‘La capilla de música de la catedral de Santiago de Cuba’, RMC, no.90 (1964), 14–61
O. Alén: La música de las sociedades de tumba francesa en Cuba (Havana, 1986)
N. Pérez Rodríguez: El carnaval santiaguero (Santiago de Cuba, 1988)
J. Millet and R. Brea: Grupos folklóricos de Santiago de Cuba (Santiago de Cuba, 1989)
J. Robbins: Making Popular Music in Cuba: a Study of the Cuban Institutions of Musical Production and the Musical Life of Santiago de Cuba (diss., U. of Illinois, 1990)
ROBERT STEVENSON/ROBIN MOORE