Cultural Cuba Tours with Musician Guides
VIP Music Festivals, and Cultural Experiences. Handcrafted and Personalized Cuba Tours
Travel to Cuba with Musicians and Musicologists
These tours offer a genuine connection to Cuba through its music. They are designed for travelers, musicians, and academics who seek direct contact with the island’s musical culture and its creators. The trips provide a structured opportunity to learn from and listen to the people who continue a deep and complex musical tradition.
Music in Its Cultural Context
Each day is built around musical and cultural education. The experience includes workshops on Cuban popular dance, visits to organic farms to understand the country’s relationship with its land, and direct engagement with local artists in their private studios. The schedule also incorporates explorations of colonial architecture, historical museums, and local markets to provide context for the music you will hear.
A Survey of Cuban Sound
Evenings are dedicated to listening in a variety of settings. You will visit historic theaters, small music clubs, and private performance spaces. The nightly itinerary is a survey of Cuban musical forms, showcasing the close vocal harmonies of traditional boleros, the interlocking polyrhythms of rumba, and the foundational patterns of son montuno. The range of styles includes sonorous Afro-Cuban drumming, the sophisticated progressions of Latin jazz, and contemporary genres like Cuban reggaeton.
Private Stays and Local Dining
Accommodations are in Casas Particulares and Private Boutique Hotels. These privately owned homes allow for a more personal stay and a closer look at daily Cuban life. Meals are a significant part of the tour. All dinners, except for the final night, are included at top-rated Paladares, which are private, family-run restaurants known for their high-quality food. Menus are served family-style, and dietary needs for vegans and vegetarians are accommodated.
An Informed Cultural Exchange
These tours are for those who want to learn straight from the source. The focus is on providing an informed, respectful, and substantive cultural exchange. The quality of this approach is consistently documented in the company’s 5-star reviews on TripAdvisor.
Explore available tours and plan your trip to Cuba.
Accommodation
We include your luxurious โCasa Particularโ or “Villa” in the tour price. Each one is hand-selected by us and quality tested.
โCasa Particularโ is the Spanish phrase to describe aย privately ownedย bed and breakfast style house or room for rent. Casa Particulares are the best option for supporting and interacting with the Cuban people. We highly recommend them!
Daily itinerary
You can view sample itineraries for each of our tours on their respective pages
About a week or so before you depart for your tour we will provide aย uniquelyย arranged and final itinerary for each day of your tour. It will feature the most up-to-date live performance schedules for all musical and non-musical events. It will also include all of the places we will visit. This is usually very similar to the sample itinerary, but it will have more details such as the time frames, artist/venue names, etc.
Each tour is unique and fits different travelers’ desires.
Live Music Venues
In Cuba, most of theย primary musical performancesย can occur really late at night. Band start times can range fromย 10pm-1am each night.
In additionย to your daily itinerary, we maintain an optional late night schedule that features private reservations to the best music venues in Havana and beyond. If you wish to go, we also include the entry to each musical event into your Casa-Inclusive-package. (By the way, some entries to venues will include a couple of free cocktails.)
We will see some ofย the best musicians in Cuba authenticly performing styles such as Afro-Cuban Rumba, Latin Jazz, Traditional, Afro-Funk, Timba (Salsa), and more.
Meals
Most of your food is included on your trip. Each tour has different and specific meal inclusions, but all of them include breakfast. For the most part, we like to eat family-style at all of the best restaurants in Cuba. Certain tours may include lunches and/or dinners, and there are some free days to have a private meal on your own (if you wish). Usually, breakfast is pretty fulfilling, so snacks may be appropriate when walking around on some days. We have discovered that sitting down at a restaurant to eat 3 times per day with a group takes up too much time… and we have lots of stuff to see!! Don’t worry, you will eat well!
Breakfast usually features a freshly sliced array of fruits, vegetables, a choice of eggs, bread, freshly squeezed juices, and even an authentic Cafรฉ Cubano.
Sometimes we will prepare snacks for lunch as needed, otherwise, we typically eat dinners between 5 pm-8 pm.
For dinner, we will eat at some of the best restaurants in Cuba. We have tried many of the top-rated restaurants and handpicked our favorites to share with you. We will eat altogether most evenings and dine family style, in a similar way to how Cubans eat. We will usually allow at least one evening to dine at your own leisure. Whatever you chose, we have plenty of recommendations for you and we will gladly make any reservations on your behalf.
Tour Guides
You will have an experienced professional musician or musicologist as your tour leader. Your tour leader will be bilingual in Spanish and English. Let us know if you speak any other language. We can also get interpreters that speak Chinese, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and more.
We also include local tour guides that specialize in different aspects of Cuban culture: history, architecture, art, music, etc. This makes for a comfortable, informative, and exciting experience. (Even if you donโt speak Spanish!)
Flights and transportation
All tours include pick up and drop off from the airports in Cuba.ย We arrange daily transportation from the Casa/Villa to all scheduled events and to different cities.
We do not include the flights, but we will help you to book the best fight based on your location. There are many commercial flights available from the US, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America. So, no matter where you are flying from we will help you pick the best connections to join the tour on time.
Tour Pricing and Payments
Prices are per person and vary based on your selection of a Group Casa, Private Casa, Private Boutique Hotels, etc. Each tour has its own options for accommodations listed on the webpage. Some tours are only Casas, and some could be only a Hotel. All options have a private room and a private bathroom.
To reserve your spot, we require a $1000 USD deposit (50% of the total price for private tours.) Final payments are due around 60 days before tour departure. We have some options for multiple payment plans if needed. Just contact us and let us know.
The prices on our website are all in US Dollars and based on an ACH/Wire bank transfer from our 3rd party merchant or directly from your own bank. If you wish to use a credit or debit card, a 3.5% fee will be added. We do not accept cash or checks.
We have plenty of individuals, couples, groups, and families that travel with us, and everyone has a blast. If you have any special requests, please let us know. We will work with you to make sure you have the perfect space and feel comfortable during your stay.
If our dates do not work for you, keep in mind that we also do personalized tours with custom dates and group sizes. More infoย here.
All our Cuba Tours!
Top Music Experiences in Havana
Kudos to Chaz for assembling an amazing Cuban staff who are always ready to help, guide, and educate. Cuba is not an easy place to describe, but the experience was life-changing in a good way! Incredible music, warm and intrepid people. Lots of history, culture, and good food. Our fellow tour members from all over the world became friends. We loved supporting the mission of helping build bridges across cultures through music. Read More
My 14 year old son and I just spent 4 days visiting Havana on a private tour with Havana Music Tours. We chose them because they offered the 2 main things we were seeking – (1) the license, knowledge, and experience needed to make the visit smooth for U.S. citizens and (2) the expertise and relationships to facilitate authentic and direct interaction with Cuban music and musicians. I’m so grateful to the entire Havana Music Tours team for all they did to make our trip so smooth and meaningful. I’d highly recommend both HMT and Ismelys to anyone and would happily travel with them again to Cuba or anywhere else! Read More
Absolutely fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime custom-built musical and cultural tour around Havana! Chaz and Yami took all of our requests and constraints into consideration while planning and customizing our tour, which included mouth-watering dining in paladares, musical experiences & concerts, and walking & driving city tours. Read More
Chaz personalized our tour and gave us a 5-star experience. He has chosen the best staff, from the tour guides all the way down to the house staff that fixed us breakfast to the bus drivers! We also were happy to give back to the people by bringing much needed items that the locals could use or needed..I HIGHLY Recommend Havan Music Tours! Read More
