Cuba

Jazz In Cuba

Ken Franckling on cultural exchange trips to Cuba by American jazz musicians

Arturo Sandoval: From Cuba, With Love

A trip to the Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club in Miami Beach is a bit of a luxurious time warp. An entire wall of the upscale nightclub is dedicated to black-and-white photographs of its namesake Cuban trumpeter rubbing elbows with celebrities, from Dizzy Gillespie...

Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo Ned Sublette

January/February 2005 By Christopher Porter

Ned Sublette
Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo

You know you’re in for a major time commitment right away with this book: In the introduction Ned Sublette says he doesn’t even get to Cuba until chapter five 287 pages into this 768-page tome. If you’re the impatient sort who doesn’t care that in 1104 B...

December 2003 By Felix Contreras

Chucho Valdés: Everything’s New Again

How do you create something completely new using concepts that are thousands of years old? Check in with New Conceptions (Blue Note), the new release from pianist and composer Chucho Valdés to find out. “The significance of the title is the new rhythmic...

October 2003 By Nat Hentoff

Final Chorus: Inside Looks at Cuban Society

Nat Hentoff's personal take on travel to Cuba

October 2000 By Larry Appelbaum

Cachao
Cuba Linda
CineSon/EMI Latin

Cachao (Israel Lopez) is arguably the most important Cuban musician living outside of Cuba. The 84-year-old Havana-born bassist, composer and bandleader created the mambo with his brother Orestes in the 1930s, and recorded a series of historic descargas...

January/February 2000 By Bill Bennett

Paquito D'Rivera
Tropicana Nights
Chesky Records

It may have started out as "the Spanish tinge," Jelly Roll Morton's appropriation of Latin feel for some of his seminal jazz compositions, but it has evolved into a substantial world of its own. These four recordings grant a glimpse of the range of Latin...

June 1999 By Chip Stern

Paquito D'Rivera: New Worlds, Old Worlds

Listening to Paquito D’Rivera’s Grammy Award winning collaboration with the gifted composer/arranger Carlos Franzetti (Portraits of Cuba Chesky JD145) on the bus ride over to New Jersey, I’m impressed anew by the uncompromising depth and breadth of this...