Manifesting itself in the locals' entrepreneurial spirit, the thrumming music halls and the makeshift restaurants are an inimitable mix of Cuban rum, rhythm and revolution.

You already know Santiago de Cuba. In fact, you probably already love it. Make a shortlist of iconic Cuban things, and odds are great music, good rum and the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people will top the list.

What you might not know is that all three were born in Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second-largest city and—as far as Santiaguerans are concerned—its pounding heart.

Santiago is the wellspring of Afro-Cuban culture. It’s the place where African rhythm first encountered Spanish tradition to produce the island’s inimitable music. In 1862, rum baron Don Facundo Bacardí Massó opened his first distillery in Santiago and the former Bacardi distillery now produces an excellent version under the brand name Cubay.

This city in the southeastern part of Cuba was also the birthplace of the Cuban Revolution—the first city conquered by Fidel Castro’s guerilla army in 1959. On Santiago’s atmospheric streets, rum, music and revolution combine into an intoxicating mix with an irresistible beat. If you want to veer slightly off the well trodden trek to Havana, put this romantic, caught-in-a-time warp city on your list.

The music was what first drew me to the city and, in Santiago, it is everywhere. Music pours out of restaurants; it saturates the old Spanish plazas; it lines the walls of shops.

When my wife and I go for a late lunch at the lobby lounge of the Casa Granda—the landmark colonial hotel that anchors Parque Cespedes, Santiago’s main square—we find the place bopping to a killer nine-piece band with a full horn section. I duck into a little book stall on Calle Heredia, the tourist market street, and start to flip through old LPs when the gregarious proprietor pulls the albums out of my hands, cues up his favourite tracks on his old phonograph and mambos around the tiny store to pour coffee for both of us.

Another afternoon, we walk to the old Bacardi distillery and stop along the way at an ancient pharmacist’s shop, its shelves lined with dusty bottles full of powders and ointments, like a photo from the 1920s come to life. As we admire the pharmacy, a grandmotherly older woman approaches us and strikes up a conversation. She explains that she works as an economist, but her real passion is singing—opera, in particular. “Would you like to hear a song?” she asks. Well, who could possibly resist?

So we stand there, in broad daylight on a street corner in old Santiago de Cuba, being serenaded with a gorgeous ballad, a tango rendered with an opera singer’s range and flair. We are dumbstruck with delight, but passersby barely pause. An old woman treating a couple of tourists to a concert-hall-calibre tango on the pharmacy steps? Just another Friday afternoon in Santiago, apparently.

The heart and soul of Santiago’s scene is its music halls, particularly the one widely regarded as the ultimate shrine to Cuba’s musical heritage: the Casa de la Trova. Trova is the heart of Cuban music—the word originally comes from trovadores which referred to groups of 19th-century travelling musicians. Under Castro, state-run trova halls were established in most Cuban cities to showcase all manner of Cuban rhythms. And Santiago’s Casa de la Trova is the granddad of Cuban trova halls, a legendary venue that has hosted all the greats. Located just off the main square, it is a welcoming place with dark wood beams and an arcaded balcony. The joint thrums with beautiful music in numerous Cuban styles all day long, and in the evening, locals and tourists alike showcase for their skillful dance moves.

The other pole of Santiago’s musical universe is the Casa de la Tradiciones, a less-formal music hall in a converted colonial house on a backstreet in the city’s funky Tivoli neighbourhood. In place of old wood, there are rafters tiled in old concert posters. While Casa de la Trova has a nightclub vibe, Tradiciones is more like a rollicking house party that’s remounted every night. I’m not much of a dancer, but as expert hands plucked guitar strings and pounded feverishly on bongos on the cramped Tradiciones stage, even I was moved to join the sea of whirling bodies. Santiaguerans, I can report, are more than happy to teach you a move or two.

Parched dancers need drinks and so I dutifully sample the mojitos on offer at every music hall and club and hotel lounge I visit. Cuban rum is second to none, and it is at a makeshift restaurant not far from Casa de la Tradiciones that my wife and I encounter the pinnacle of the rum mixologist’s art.

Like all the best food and drink in Santiago, we find the ultimate mojito in a paladar. These are private homes throughout Cuba that are partially or fully converted into modest restaurants with room and board. There are scores of these paladares across the city, and nearly anyone you meet on the street can direct you to the nearest one (including touts who earn commissions for doing so from the more-established paladares).

We discover the one near Tradiciones simply by arriving too early at the music hall. We are about to head back to the city centre when my wife offhandedly asks the man at the door where to get a bite to eat. He ushers us around the corner, where a small, boisterous crowd has gathered around a folding table to watch a game of dominoes.

A young man comes over and introduces himself as Cuqui. He leads us up the block to a small home and disappears behind a curtain in the back, leaving us to sit in the tiny living room watching Spanish-language soap operas with who I assumed was his grandmother. Cuqui returns 20 minutes later. He leads us through a child’s bedroom and down some crumbling concrete stairs to a patio with a commanding view of Santiago de Cuba Bay. He has set a table elegantly for us and puts a mix of fine traditional Cuban tunes on the stereo.

The food—particularly the main course of whole fried fish in a creole sauce—is probably the best thing we’ve eaten in Santiago that wasn’t a grilled lobster. But the real revelation is Cuqui’s house cocktail. It is a mojito garnished with sprigs of fresh sweet basil instead of mint. He calls it Alto del Mar (meaning “top of sea”), which is also what he calls his little restaurant.

We linger for a second round after dinner and Cuqui talks a bit about life in a city and a country stuck between 50 years of Fidel and whatever comes next. He is confident in his ability to navigate Cuba’s uncertain future.

“In Cuba,” he tells us, “today is today. Hoy es hoy. And manana is another time.”

Cuba’s revolutionary past is just as easy to find in Santiago as the rum and music. At the Museum of Clandestine Struggle, display cases carefully preserve the history of the revolution’s early days in collections of Molotov cocktails and bloodstained suits.

After a few days wandering the city’s streets, though, I come to think the real spirit of the revolution lies closer at hand. It lives on in the mid-century cars growling up the streets, in the children in their school uniforms flashing broad easy smiles and in the relentless beat of the music echoing Cuqui’s fearless refrain: Hoy es hoy.

One afternoon, I stop in at the Artex music store near the main square to peruse the CD selection, looking for one of the bands Cuqui had played. The rear courtyard of the store serves as a small, lively performance space, and the rhythm soon draws my wife and I to settle in at a table with a couple of mojitos.

The band is an eight-piece with a singer in short, greying dreadlocks. The rest of his band is dressed in tees and old jeans, like business guys at a weekend picnic. The sound is flawless and infectious. They move effortlessly from old sounds and slinky salsa numbers to steaming jazz. The trumpeter mutes his horn with his hand to get a vampy old-jazz growl out of it, giving the courtyard a speakeasy vibe.

Just after five o’clock, someone sets up a bottle of three-year-old rum at the side of the stage and puts out a small glass for each of the musicians. It is the perfect Santiago tableau: music, rum and revolutionary rhythm, together as one.

I came to Santiago primarily in search of that beat, but I found much more. I found a city caught between a storied past and an uncertain future, confronting both with easygoing grace and irrepressible Santiagueran enthusiasm.

Related links:

Havana Nightlife Guide

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Cuba

Drink your way through Barbados with rum

Samana Adventure Guide (w/ Video)