Music from Cuba: Mongo Santamaria, Chocolate Armenteros, and Other Stateside Cuban Musicians

Studies of Latin American music often overlook its Cuban roots and the political policies that brought the musicians to the United States. This work rectifies that omission by examining the Afro-Cuban influence upon Latin American music and its various idioms. A brief history of Afro-Cuban musicians in the United States, of relations between Cubans, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans in the Latin music community, and of the mass emigration in the 1980s provides the background and context for the study.

Influential pre-revolutionary Afro-Cuban immigrant musicians, such as Mongo Satnamaria, Jesus Caunedo, Charanga and Pup Legarreta, Juan Carlos Formell, and Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, discuss both their music and their attitudes toward the political policies that led them to flee Cuba. Speaking from firsthand experience, founding figures of Latin music in the United States present unique insights into the Afro-Cuban experience within the Latin musical community.