José Manuel Aniceto Díaz

He is one of the most distinguished creators of dance music, a renowned flutist, composer, orchestra conductor, and pedagogue. Two significant honors correspond to this colleague: giving voice to the Danzón and linking the two most significant danceable rhythms of music: the Son and the Danzón, in a new rhythmic form known as the Danzonete.

He was born in the city of Matanzas. During elementary school, at just ten years old he entered the world of music by helping to carry musical instruments in an orchestra. While learning the trade of tailor, he studied music theory and solfège with a bombardino uncle from the Matanzas Band.

He later studied the figle with instrumentalist Eduardo Betancourt, from Miguel Failde's Orchestra, and by 1902 he replaced his teacher in the orchestra where he remained for several years. He also studied flute and piano.

In the nineteen-tens of the past century, he began to reap success performing the flute and as a composer. It was during that time that he created his first danzones, among them El chiflido, Yattey, La Pulga, A la voz de fuego, La niña de los besos. In 1914 Aniceto Díaz created his own orchestra and in May they performed in the halls of the Liceo Artístico de Matanzas.

At the end of the nineteen-twenties in the musical and dance environment the panorama for the Danzón was changing unfavorably due to the preference for the Son with sextets and septets as well as Jazz Band orchestras with music of North American origin. Contracts for danzonera groups were scarce. Aniceto Díaz realized that the Son was preferred by the great majority due to its simplicity in dance execution.

He separated its main characteristics: regular rhythm, simple melody and harmony, the alternation of a solo and a refrain, derived from primitive son montunos; although the soneros did not know written music they achieved surprising and original effects, and moreover they were performed continuously, without any interruption as happened with the Danzón.

Then, without trying to structure a new dance, Aniceto Díaz created what he would call the Danzonete, a form that started from the fundamental elements of the Danzón. It is not a fusion between Son and Danzón, but rather a variant of the Danzón to which elements of the Son are incorporated.

On June 8, 1929, the first Danzonete, titled Rompiendo la Rutina, premiered at the Casino Español de Matanzas. The new genre greatly highlighted the solo singer and its montuno became almost a Guaracha.

Starting with the first Danzonete, Aniceto Díaz's Orchestra achieved great demand in the halls and societies of Matanzas. On Sunday, November 25 of that same year 1929, they performed in the first broadcast of the PWX Radio Station of Matanzas, and shortly after on Cuban Telephone of Havana.

From 1930 to 1932, the Danzonete was successfully introduced in a musical revue at the Teatro Martí in the capital. Gerardo Pérez's orchestra performed the Danzonete for the first time in Havana at the Sport Antillano center. Aniceto Díaz also composed other danzonetes, among them El trigémino, El cocodrilo, Zona franca, Dulce imagen, Engreída, Dulce imagen, and others.

The long-distance telephone was very successful in the nineteen-twenties and Aniceto Díaz's orchestra recorded Rompiendo la Rutina for the Brunswick record label.

José Manuel Aniceto Díaz died in Havana on July 10, 1964. Although his creation, the Danzonete, was a genre or rhythm of fleeting life, it left wonderful pages in music, above all, thanks to Paulina Álvarez, who was called the empress of the Danzonete. Furthermore, it decisively influenced composers and orchestra conductors such as Antonio María Romeu, Antonio Arcaño, Arsenio Rodríguez, and Enrique Jorrín.