Cuban musi'cography has also shown that the process which led to the birth of a national musical idiom had been a slow one, lasting through the 16th. i7th and 18th centuries, but the fact remains that documents and other available evidence show that various types of music, rhythms and dances of eh unquestionably national style greeted the arrival of the 19th century, especially m places like Havana and Santiago de Cuba, which were the centers of a certain amount of cultural and artistic development, as compared to Other regions of the then Spanish colony.