The "crisol de la cubanía", as Fernando Ortiz qualified the extremely complex process of imbrications, mixtures and sedimentation of all features brought by different immigrant ethnic groups to our island in the long way of the Cuban nationality conformation, set also in the musical traditions, the beautiful legate of the Tumba Francesa.

Its early stages can be traced to the arrival of French landowners, who ran away with their slaves during the Haitian Revolution on 1791. Some of them found new place at zones from the Cuban Orient, mainly in the well-known areas of Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo. Other regions located in the central part of the island, such as Cienfuegos and Matanzas, received also this influence.

Having already the experience of the consequences for slavery abuses and cruel treatment, the French-born immigrant landowners gave a better treatment to their workers, diminishing corporal punishments and allowing the practice of French-Haitian traditions, specially their dances and festivities and even letting them to ''buy their freedom''.

In this process, a sort of dancing known as Tumba Francesa came up in which the Negroes, using Patois or Creole language, used to imitate the dancing style of their French masters. At the same time, the owners helped them with elegant clothes, shawls, silk handkerchiefs, spinning robes, necklaces and earrings.

The Tumba Francesa is distinguished from other African dancing due the costumes used by its members and the dancing style, its movements are related to the so-called ballroom dancing, where men and women move together with softness and elegance, without rising their feet from the floor. The discreet and charm movements present through the dresses and robes` cadenza featured this style.

Many of these slaves that obtained their freedom, were organized on different societies, among which we can highlight the Sociedad de Tumba Francesa Lafayette, which honored the notable French general. Around 1905, this name is substituted by Sociedad de Tumba Francesa La Caridad de Oriente.

Tumba is a conga voice meaning revelry or party in terms of Bantú language. In Cuba Tumba is the mix of drums, chants and minué-styled dancing, adding the refined tint of the French-born Negroes. These cadences were performed at public squares or open-air places.

Tumba Francesa is currently alive on the traditions defended by its seventh generation, most of them young people. The institution, officially headquartered at the Santiago's Casco Histórico, received the 2000 National Prize of Community Culture and on November 2003, UNESCO declared it Obra Maestra del Patrimonio Oral e Inmaterial de la Humanidad (Master Work from the Oral and Immaterial Patrimony of Humanity).