Through its historic relationship with Cuba, tresillo rose to popularity in New Orleans in the 1800s where it eventually helped to form ragtime with its subsequent influence on American music. It helped to shape jazz syncopation, lent itself to R&B music and became so popular in New Orleans music that the famous musician Wynton Learson Marsalis considers it to be the New Orleans "clave".
In terms of modern Cuban music, the rhythmic pattern has become particularly important in salsa songs as it denotes the 3-side of the son clave pattern. As such it is inherent to the vast majority of salsa songs whether it is played out or implied. It is the tresillo pattern that creates tension in the clave and is therefore referred to as the strong side of the clave irrespective of whether the clave pattern is 2-3 or 3-2. By comparison, the two side of the clave is often called “debil”, meaning the weak side of the clave which has the function of releasing the tension created by tresillo.
Moreover, tresillo is also the rhythmic basis of the bass and the conga drum in Afro-Cuban music which led to its use as the rhythmic pattern in son montuno, mambo and salsa dubbed “tumbao”. Sometimes the tumbao pattern is played by carrying the last beat over to the next measure leading to a rhythmic structure where only the two offbeats of the tresillo pattern are sounded. In this form the pattern is often called the bombo-ponche tumbao with bombo referring to the first off-beat and ponche referring to the second off-beat. While there are many variations on the tumbao rhythm based on the tresillo structure two main categories of this rhythm have emerged: Tumbao that coincides or emphasises the clave tresillo pattern is called clave aligned whereas a tumbao rhyth that does not fulfil this condition is usually referred to as clave neutral.
