Cuba Playlist

Cuban club music right now runs on two tracks at once. One is the old club reggaeton that filled Havana and Miami rooms, and a late-September TikTok post set off a wave of nostalgia for it, with Los 4 and Yomil y El Dany named as the dancefloor names of that generation. Yomil y El Dany are also credited with popularising traptón, the trap-reggaeton fusion, through "Tengo" and "Rikaperry". The other track is the DJ-pool version. Cuban reggaeton and cubaton vocals are being cut into house-style edits, mostly between about 94 and 130 BPM, so they sit over a four-to-the-floor kick. Alongside that, young independent artists in Havana are making ambient, electronic pop and shoegaze, and Buh Records and Ultramar are the labels putting it out.

This month the WorldWidePop playlist added nothing. Its seven videos mix newer Planet Records uploads, Osmani Garcia & La Musa's "Bumper", Peter Nieto's "Se Desespera" and Srta Dayana's "A Ti Lo Que Te Duele", with older material. Orishas' "Represent Cuba" and elloko59's "A lo Cubano" are classics that have been on YouTube for years, and they still earn their place. The "Represent" video has about 43 million views, which says the catalogue still gets heavy repeat play.

Listeners are dialling in from Greece, Italy and Mexico. Keep an eye on Orishas, who play Teatro Vorterix in Buenos Aires on 24 October on the "Represent Cuba 2026" tour, a set drawn from A lo cubano. They are also working on a new album, Guantanamera, framed as a tribute to Cuban women.