'Carnaval' originated in Italy with the tradition of holding a wild costume festival just before the first day of Lent. The name originated with the custom of giving up meat for Lent - carnevale means "to put away the meat". From Italy, carnevale spread via Spain to the Caribbean and the Americas and carnaval (as it became in Spanish) has some of its deepest roots in Cuba. Most Cuban towns and cities have their own carnivals, but Santiago de Cuba, the island's old capital and the centre of the sugar and rum industries in the far south-east, has the most distinctive carnaval which developed when neighbourhood groups took to the streets in June and July in masked celebrations known as fiestas de mamarrachos. Originally, carnivals took place in the homes of plantation owners. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the arrival of large numbers of west African slaves to work the cane fields changed carnival as the African tradition of parading through villages in costumes and masks became a central part of the annual events. Carnival traditions also borrow from the African tradition of putting together natural objects to create a mask or costume, with each object or combination of objects representing a certain idea or spiritual force. In recent years, Cuban musicians have enthusiastically taken up and developed Reggaeton which has become an important component of Santiago's carnival.