The narratives and testimonies of contemporary chroniclers have allowed us to understand the importance of Areíto as the most significant collective expression of Aboriginal culture. This magical-religious ceremony of the Cuban Aborigines blended music, dance, song, rituals, and oral tradition.

The word Areíto comes from the Araucan aerin, which means to rehearse and recite. The song was sung and danced collectively for an extended period of time. The song had a dialogical structure, with a couplet and a chorus. The dances were mimetic and had a ritualistic character. The soloist or leader was called Tequina in the indigenous language; he was the one who initiated the song.

According to the description by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz: “Areítos were the complex form that the social phenomenon we call “festival” took among the Indians, which was an institution of great importance among them. Not only as an exciting collective pleasure that focused the desires and energies of the human group during the time of expectation and fulfillment.

It was an opportunity to establish and strengthen relationships not only between indigenous members of the same tribe, but also between foreign or neighboring tribes, and also between the authorities and those governed.

The areíto was also an important social function of economic significance. First and foremost, it was a way of formalizing the concerted efforts of individuals for a collective labor endeavor, such as the logging of the forest, planting, building a house, a temple, a batey, a village, or a large canoe, or performing a great sacred-magical ceremony to ensure harvests or rainfall and ward off disasters like hurricanes, etc.

In Areíto, the Cuban aborigines used various musical instruments to accompany themselves.