Tío Tom

Gonzalo Asencio Hernández (5 April 1919 – 1991), known as Tío Tom (Uncle Tom), was an Afro-Cuban musician who specialized in the rumba and its variant, the guaguancó. Asencio was the author of hundreds of pieces that for decades were sung and danced by Cubans without knowing who created them, except among circles of rumba musicians. His uncertain and bohemian lifestyle was exploited by certain “professional” musicians who registered his compositions as their own, stripping him of his author’s rights. Only in 1982 did musicians, writers, and disc jockeys manage to organize a tribute to him, in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution Cultural Center.

Asencio was born on 5 April 1919. His father, Nicanor, was a stevedore on the La Machina dock; his mother, Carmelina, a great pastry cook. Gonzalo as a child worked as shoeshine boy, newspaper peddler, bricklayer’s assistant, and day laborer, while he studied in primary school. In the 1920s, the family moved to several neighborhoods, from 10 de Octubre to Carraguao (in El Cerro) and Atarés, and in the 1950s to the town of Güines. Finally, Tío settled in neighboring Guanabacoa.