Background

This project grew out of a desire to attain a deeper understanding of the complex multicultural phenomenon that is Latin music. Born in West and Central Africa, raised in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil and New Orleans, and attaining its full bloom in New York, Latin music is truly a global phenomenon that embraces two centuries, three continents and innumerable cultural traditions.

Today, salsa and Latin jazz are played and enjoyed all over the world by musicians and dancers of all ethnic origins. Until recently, full-length studies on this subject were scarce. In the past ten years, research on the origins and development of jazz yielded information and renewed interest on the parallel, intertwined development of its close cousin, Latin music.

Since 1999, seminal studies have been published by John Storm Roberts, Robin Moore, Isabelle Leymarie, Lise Waxer, Leonardo Acosta, and Raúl Fernández. A traveling bilingual exhibition on Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, opened in Washington D.C. in 2003 and will circle the nation for the next three years.

A generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities enabled Professors Ana María Hernández, Max Rodríguez and Gustavo Moretto to form a study group under the direction of consultant Edgardo Díaz-Díaz to delve into recent publications on the subject and listen to CD reissues of sources long unavailable. While the grant project resulted in a series of instructional modules to be used in three specific courses, we felt the need to extend our findings to a larger public.

Crucial technical and didactic support from Abigail Schoneboom and Roslyn Orgel of LaGuardia Community College's Center for Teaching and Learning made this website possible. None of this would have been realized without the hard work, creative eye, and precise spirit of Delwar Sayeed, Instructional Design Assistant of the LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning.

We hope this site will be as informative and inspiring to you as it has been to us.

Bibliography

Acosta, Leonardo. Cubano Be, Cubano Bop. One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba. Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2003.

Béhague, Gerard. Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil's Musical Soul. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.

Béhague, Gerard, ed. Music and Black Ethnicity. The Caribbean and South America. Miami: North-South Center Press, 1994.

Carpentier, Alejo. La música en Cuba. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972.

Díaz-Ayala, Cristobal. Música Cubana. Del areyto a la nueva trova. Miami: Universal, 1993.

Farr, Jory. Rites of Rhythm. The Music of Cuba. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

Fernández, Raúl. Latin Jazz. The Perfect Combination. San Francisco: Chronicle/Smithsonian, 2002.

Holloway, Joseph E., ed. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Levy, Joseph. "Perez Prado and Mambomania." http://www.laventure.net/tourist/prez_bio.htm

Leymarie, Isabelle. Cuban Fire. The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz. New Yok: Continuum, 2002.

Manuel, Peter. Caribbean Currents. Caribbean Music From Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.

Moore, Robin D. Nationalizing Blackness. Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

Roberts, John Storm. Latin Jazz. The First of the Fusions. 1880’s to Today. New York: Schirmer, 1999.

Roberts, John Storm. The Latin Tinge. The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Rosenstiel, Leonie. Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music. New York: Norton, 1998.

Sublette, Ned. Cuba and Its Music. From the First Drums to the Mambo. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004.

Vélez, María Teresa. The Trade of an Afro-Cuban Religious Drummer: Felipe Garcia Villamil. Doctoral Dissertation. Wesleyan University, 1996.

Waxer, Lise, ed. Situating Salsa. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Yanow, Scott. Afro-Cuban Jazz. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000.