Casa de la Trova, Santiago de Cuba

The Best Known Music House In Cuba, In The City Where Son And Trova Were Born, With Live Sessions Through The Afternoon And Evening In Two Small Rooms · Santiago de Cuba, Santiago de Cuba

Santiago is where son cubano was put together out of Spanish guitar and African drum, and where trova - the tradition of the singer with a guitar and something to say - began in the late nineteenth century. Casa de la Trova has been the room for it since 1968: a colonial house on Calle Heredia with two small performance spaces, walls covered floor-to-ceiling in photographs of the musicians who have played here, and sessions that run from the afternoon through the evening. Downstairs is older and more traditional, upstairs gets louder and later. It is on the tourist circuit now and the late sets know it, but the afternoon sessions are still largely local, the musicianship is extraordinary, and when the power goes the band plays acoustic and the room improves. Ten minutes away in the Tivoli quarter, Casa de las Tradiciones is the version with no tour groups in it at all, and between them they are the reason to give Santiago an evening rather than a stopover.

Calle Heredia 208, Santiago de Cuba, Santiago de Cuba, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba

Sessions run in the AFTERNOON from roughly mid-afternoon and again in the EVENING, usually from about nine, most days of the week, with a cover charge at the door and drinks bought inside. The upstairs room opens later and is the livelier one. POWER CUTS HAPPEN and the bands simply play acoustic. Santiago's carnival in July and the Fiesta del Fuego in early July change everything.

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