Danzón

Danzón is Cuba's national ballroom dance music, a slow, stately instrumental form in rondo-like sections played by the charanga francesa: French flute, violins, piano, bass, güiro and timbales. Composed danzones alternate refined, European-derived strains with a syncopated final section of African derivation, the nuevo ritmo added by *Orestes López* in the late 1930s. Codified in Matanzas with *Miguel Faílde*'s "Las Alturas de Simpson" in 1879 and carried for eight decades by *Orquesta Aragón*, danzón is the root from which mambo and cha-cha-chá grew, and remains a living tradition in Cuba and in Veracruz, Mexico.