Search - Various Artists :: Rough Guide: The Music of Cuba

This anthology nicely complements the Cuba chapter in The Rough Guide to World Music and is probably as adequate an introduction to the imponderably influential scope of 20th-century Cuban music as could be distilled down to a single CD. Although tilted toward the jazz end of spectrum, this diverse collection includes Lazaro Ros's profound, drum-driven invocation of the Santeria deity "Elegba," musica campesina star Celina Gonzalez's rough-hewn "roots salsa," the nimble, acoustic guitars and voices of old-school balladeers Vieja Trova Santiaguera, and Havana's renowned Sierra Maestra, the supple son revivalists who comprise the Buena Vista Social Club's musical backbone. Maria Bauza's "Mamba Rincon" shows how the bandleader fused Cuban and North American jazz in the 1940s, a hot hybrid that perseveres in the music of such great Cuban dance bands as Los Van Van and Orquesta Riverside, as well as in more musically ambitious groups like Irakere and Ritmo y Candela (all included here). Cuba's music remains remarkably dynamic for a country seemingly preserved in political aspic. --Richard Gehr