Creator of the pilón — Enrique Bonne developed the pilón dance style in eastern Cuba in the 1950s, one of several regional popular dance forms that emerged alongside the larger genres documented in Cuban music history.
Bonne was a musician from the Oriente province who developed the pilón — a dance and musical style named after the large wooden mortars (pilones) used to process coffee in eastern Cuba, whose rhythmic stamping movement the dance reflects. The pilón was popularized by Pacho Alonso in the 1960s and became briefly fashionable in Havana before fading into a historical footnote.
Bonne's work is a reminder that Cuban popular music was not solely a Havana phenomenon — regional styles emerged throughout the island, and eastern Cuba in particular has been a persistent source of rhythmic innovation, from changüí through pilón to contemporary música cubana.