1800s: urban white music in Cuba consists mostly of waltz, minuet, gavotte, mazurka and other European genres

1800s: rural white Cubans and mulattos become more visible as santería practitioners

1800: Havana -- population of 100,000 -- becomes third-largest city in Americas, after Mexico City and New York City

1803: "San Pasqual Bailón," the earliest surviving contradanza appears

1500s
1600s
1700s
1900s
1811-20: single decade in Cuba's history with the largest importation of African slaves (161,000)
1824: Cuban musical troupe from Havana performs in New Orleans, marking the first recorded contact between between Cuban music and United States
1836: "La Pimienta," the earliest published habanera, is written
1860s: Sebastian Yradier's "La Paloma" popularizes the habanera in Mexico and the United States
1870s: rumba emerges in Havana, and spreads to other lower-class, urban, black neighborhoods throughout Cuba

1870: danzón first appears in Havana and reigns as the national dance of Cuba until the 1930s
1884: danzón becomes popular in Mexico

1888: Cuba outlaws slavery, the last country in the New World to do so
1896: nationalist composer Ernesto Lecuona is born in Guanacaboa, near Havana

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