Ignacio Cervantes was a Cuban pianist and composer, trained by Nicolás Ruiz Espadero and briefly by the visiting American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk before studying at the Paris Conservatoire. His forty-one Danzas Cubanas fused European salon dance forms with vernacular Cuban syncopation, making him a founding figure of Cuban national concert music; he was twice forced into exile for supporting Cuban independence before returning to Havana, where he died in 1905.