Cuban “country“ music - musica campesina de Cuba

These guys, the Cubanacan quintet, are friends of mine from the Matanzas province of Cuba. My group had plans to pass through their area, so I arranged for them to come play for us at our rest stop. This is a demonstration of traditional “musica campesina“ - the music of the Cuban countryside. Note the lute and the horse jawbone, two instruments that give this rural music its distinctive sound. They said to do it right, they’d also need a singing poet improvising lyrics over top of the music... but I like it with just the instruments, too.