Early Cuban bands

Early Cuban bands played popular music for dances and theatres during the period 1780–1930. During this period Cuban music became creolized, and its European and African origins gradually changed to become genuinely Cuban. Instrumentation and music continually developed during this period. The information listed here is in date order, and comes from whatever records survive to the present day.

For about a hundred years, from early in the nineteenth century to about 1920, the main orchestral format for popular music was the típica based on wind instruments, usually about 8–10 members. At the same time, there were also itinerant musicians, duos and trios: for them, see trova.

Founded early in the 19th century by the black violinist and double bass player Claudio Brindis de Salas, it played the dance music of the epoch at the balls of the island's aristocracy: contradanzas, minuets, rigadoons, quadrilles, lancers. It was basically a típica, or wind orchestra, which was sometimes augmented to 100 players for special occasions such as fiestas.

Brindis de Salas, a disciple of maestro Ignacio Calvo, was also a composer of creole danzas and the author of an operetta, Congojas matrimoniales. In 1844 his musical career was interrupted by his involvement in the Escalera Conspiracy, for which whites were absolved, but blacks paid dearly. Brindis de Salas was arrested and tortured. He was banished from the island by the Governor, O'Donnell. Returning in 1848, he was imprisoned for two years, and when he eventually was free to think about reorganizing his band, he found out that most of them had been executed.

Apart from the operetta, he is known for a melody dedicated to the General Concha, printed in 1854. His son, Claudio Brindis de Salas Garrido (Havana, 4 August 1852 – Buenos Aires, 1 June 1911) was an even better violinist, of world renown.

Founded by clarinetist Juan de Dios Alfonso, who moved to Havana, where he played clarinet in Feliciano Ramos's band La Unión in 1856, and directed La Almendares in 1859. It is not quite clear when he formed La Flor de Cuba, which became one of the most popular in the middle of the 19th century. They played contradanzas, and other dances of the time. The orchestra was a típica, with cornet, trombone, ophicleide, two clarinets, two violins, double bass, kettle drum, and güíro. The ophicleide (ophicleide) was a sort of bass bugle with keys, invented in 1817; the t-bone would be a valve trombone.

They were playing in the Teatro Villanueva in Havana in 1869 when the Spanish Voluntarios attacked the theatre, killing some ten or so patrons who had been watching a bufo (musical satirical comedy), and applauding its revolutionary sentiments. The context was that the Ten Years' War had started the previous year, when Carlos Manuel de Céspedes had freed his slaves, and declared Cuban independence. Creole sentiments were running high, and the Colonial government and their rich Spanish traders were reacting. Not for the first time, politics and music were closely intertwined, for musicians had been integrated since before 1800, and "from 1800 to 1840, blacks were the clear majority of the professional musicians". Bufo theatres were shut down for some years after this tragic event.

The descendant of La Flor de Cuba, led from 1877 by trombonist Raimundo Valenzuela after the death of Juan de Dios Alfonso. We do not know exactly when the name of the orchestra was changed. When Raimundo died in 1905, his brother Pablo became Director. It was, like Flor de Cuba, the most popular típica of its day.