Pupy y Los Que Son Son

Pupy y los que Son Son is a Havana-based timba ensemble whose repertoire epitomizes the genre's defining characteristics: dense Afro-Cuban percussion, aggressive rhythmic swing over fast tempos, and the interplay of brass, piano, and trap drums that sets timba apart from the broader salsa tradition.^[1] Timba famously foregrounds the bass drum — absent in salsa — and pairs it with a trap drummer, generating a propulsive, multi-layered rhythmic foundation that invites the highly improvisational, percussive partner dance known as despelote.^[1] The group occupies a significant place within the lineage of Cuban popular music that runs from songo through timba, connecting Havana's post-revolutionary dance-hall culture to its contemporary nightlife circuits.^[1]

The ensemble was founded by César "Pupy" Pedroso, a co-founder of Los Van Van, one of the most consequential bands in post-revolutionary Cuban music.^[2] Los Van Van was established in 1969 by bassist Juan Formell, and its membership — including Pupy alongside percussionist Changuito — proved decisive in developing both songo and timba as distinct dance-music genres.^[2] The songo itself, created by Formell in 1969, served as a direct predecessor to contemporary Cuban popular music, and its innovations were carried forward by orchestras such as Los Van Van and Pupy y los que Son Son.^[2] Pedroso's transition from Los Van Van to his own ensemble reflects a recurring pattern in Cuban music whereby veteran musicians channel their accumulated rhythmic vocabulary into new projects — extending rather than departing from that creative tradition.^[3]

The ensemble's documented personnel include drummer Roelvis Bombon Reyes Simono, whose work exemplifies the hybrid drum-set and timbales configurations characteristic of top-tier timba rhythm sections.^[4] The group has also collaborated with notable guest vocalists: live recordings circulating on specialist platforms have featured Mayito Rivera, Roberto Hernández, and Pedrito Calvo, demonstrating the ensemble's capacity to integrate distinguished voices from across the Havana scene into its performances.^[6] This collaborative approach — rotating frontline vocalists over a stable, highly skilled rhythm section — is itself a hallmark of the timba format, where percussive precision and improvisational interplay between instrumentalists and singers generate the energy that drives the dance floor.^[1]

The group's recorded output includes the 2012 single "Me están llamando," which circulates on digital platforms and documents the ensemble's approach during its active production years.^[5] The track's availability online has extended the group's reach well beyond Havana's clubs — a pattern common to timba ensembles whose recordings, distributed through specialist sites and streaming services, have carried the genre to dancer communities across Europe and the Americas.^[6] A 2014 concert appearance in Toulouse, drawing some six hundred attendees, illustrates the international draw that Pupy's legacy and the ensemble's musicianship command in European salsa circuits.^[6]

Scholarly treatments of songo identify Pupy y los que Son Son alongside Los Van Van as part of the orchestral lineage that carried Formell's rhythmic innovations into later decades, cementing the group's place in the documented history of Cuban popular dance music.^[2] Within the broader ecology of timba — a genre more flexible than salsa in its stylistic range, drawing on son, rumba, mambo, and Latin jazz while rooting itself in the barrios of Havana — the ensemble represents a direct institutional link between the foundational generation and the contemporary scene.^[1]