Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1899 — The Peculiar Cuban Dance. [ARTICLE]

The Peculiar Cuban Dance.

The Cuban dance Is a peculiar ona when viewed through American eyes, for It is so totally different from any of our dances. There Is only the one step, and that one Is a sort of mixture of Indian, Turkish and Chinese. The couple rarely use more than three or four square feet of space, and dance continually, with little short intermissions of possibly fifteen seconds, during which they merely stand in their places and rest. Two orchestras play continuously, one taking up the music as the other ceases. The music is almost identical with some that I have heard at the dances of our Indian tribes in Arizona and New Mexico, except that there is the continual blare of a cornet. They use tomtoms, kettledrums ,and some weird, gourd-like affair that they beat most vigorously, emitting a sound quite as musical as a boy would make with a barrel-stave as he ran along a picket fence.—Leslie’s Weekly. v ,