Rubén González: The Piano of Cuba

When the Buena Vista Social Club introduced the world to a frail, elderly Cuban pianist named Rubén González, listeners heard something extraordinary — and what they were hearing was one of the architects of modern Cuban piano, returned to the stage after years of silence.^[1]

A conservatory prodigy

Rubén González Fontanills was born on 26 May 1919 in Santa Clara, Cuba.^[1] He took up the piano at seven and graduated from the Cienfuegos Conservatory at fifteen, a thoroughly trained musician who would spend his life applying that craft to Cuban dance music.^[1]

Forging the modern Cuban piano

Together with the pianists Lilí Martínez and Peruchín, González is credited with having "forged the style of modern Cuban piano playing in the 1940s" — the percussive, montuno-driven, harmonically rich approach that powers the son and the mambo, and that defined the role of the piano in the Cuban dance bands of that decade.^[1][2] From the 1940s until his retirement in the 1980s he played with a who's-who of Cuban music, including Arsenio Rodríguez, Paulina Álvarez, the Orquesta Riverside, and the cha-cha-chá creator Enrique Jorrín.^[1][2]

Rediscovery and triumph

By the 1990s González had retired and, lacking even a piano of his own, had largely stopped playing.^[1] Then, in 1996, producers gathering musicians for the Afro-Cuban All Stars and the Buena Vista Social Club brought him back into the studio — and he played with such verve that he became one of the project's revelations, recording acclaimed solo albums and touring internationally until 2002.^[1] He died in Havana on 8 December 2003.^[1]

Why he matters

Rubén González matters because he was both a founder and a survivor of Cuban music's golden age. The piano style he helped create in the 1940s underlies the son, the mambo, and salsa itself; his late-life rediscovery alongside Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo let the world finally hear a master who had been there all along. Few pianists have ever swung with such effortless, joyful authority.