Publisher's Synopsis
In Cuban Fire, prize-winning author Isabelle Leymarie tells the thrilling saga of popular music of Cuban origin and its major artists from the 1920s to today. Afro-Cuban music derives its richness from the fusion of various cultures. On the island of tobacco, rum and coffee, the wedding of sacred and secular African musical genres with Spanish and French melodies has given rise to numerous genres that have gained international fame: son, rhumba, guaracha, conga, mambo, cha-cha-cha, pachanga, and nueva timba.The history of Cuban music also unfolds in the United States, where many large Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Hispanic communities have grown up over the years. It was in New York that such genres as boogaloo, salsa, and Latin jazz, developed by such musicians as Machito, Mario Bauzß, Dizzy Gillespie, and Chano Pozo, emerged out of contact between Puerto Rican and African American communities. Leymarie's Cuban Fire also deals with the incandescent rhythms of Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, integrated today into salsa and Latin jazz.
