sucu-sucu. Variation of the son, the origins of which stretch back to the nineteenth century on the Isle of Youth (Isla de Pinos - the name changed by the Castro regime in 1978). The term sucu-sucu describes a dance, a musical form, and the party at which this song and dance is performed. As a musical form, sucu-sucu is played in a distinctive style. Maria Teresa Linares notes of the sucu-sucu that its music is similar, in its formal, melodic, instrumental, and harmonic structure, to that of a son montuno. A soloist alternates with the chorus; the two sing the same lines to the accompaniment of the musicians. The sucu-sucu is precluded by a soloist's improvisation of either an octo-syllabic quatrain or a country ballad; then comes an introduction in which each instrument joins gradually, after the tres. This eight-beat introduction is followed by a choral refrain that alternates continually with the soloist's singing. When the body of the song begins, the tres and the guitar both strum a bass part over a tonic, both dominant and subdominant, or in descensions falling toward the tonic. The maracas beat a regular rhythm based on semi-quavers, the drum and bongos are allowed free rhythmic schemes, and a machete is used against a knife as a scraper to create a regular rhythm pattern. All the while the clave keeps the time. The sucu-sucu is danced in groups, and the couples hold each other close. The man puts one arm behind the woman's back and both dancers extend the other arm and clasp hands The shoulders and hips remain stationary. The sucu-sucu is danced as if it were a son (Linares, El sucu-sucu de Isla de Pinos). In the 1940s Eliseo Grenet based several songs on the sucu-sucu style, helping to diffuse this new style all over Cuba and abroad.
Gee, did you think we'd get all that out of a Nina & Fredrik song that sounds like grocery store music?