What is "tresillo"

Tresillo (capital: Ꜫ, small: ꜫ; Spanish for "little three") is a letter of several colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 3. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the uvular ejective consonant found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters. In cursive form, the tresillo is often written .

Tresillo can be :

• In typography, tresillo is an additional letter of the Latin alphabet invented in the 16th century in order to be use in Mayan languages.
• In music, tresillo is the Spanish word for a triplet in music, that is, a group of three notes to be played in the time of two of the same kind. In the vernacular of Latin music, tresillo refers to three strokes in duple-pulse structure (2/4, 2/2, or 4/4), which correlate to a triplet.

Tresillo is a more basic form of the rhythmic figure known as the habanera. It is the most fundamental duple-pulse rhythmic cell in Cuban and other Latin American musics. Tresillo was introduced in the New World through the Atlantic slave trade during the Colonial period. The pattern is also the most fundamental and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in Sub-Saharan African music traditions. Anglicized pronunciation: tray-see-yo.

The cinquillo pattern is another common embellishment of tresillo. Cinquillo is used frequently in the Cuban contradanza (the "habanera") and the danzón.