Word: cuba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton, who claimed that he himself invented jazz, said, "Music cannot be called jazz unless it has the Spanish tinge." Morton used many rhythms native to Cuba, such as the habanera, in his compositions...
SAXOPHONIST Paquito D'Rivera, Cuba's most recent gift to American music, is Latin jazz's newest talent as well as the most recent example of the exchange between Cuban and American music...
...Cuba, whose music is a rich mixture of various African traditions with Spanish, French, and other genres of music, has for over a century been involved in an ongoing process of musical cross fertilization with the United States...
Although hostilities between the U.S. and Cuba in the early '60s put a damper on the exchanges between the two countries, these political antagonisms could not stem Cuban interest in American jazz. Even the term "jazz" was considered counterrevolutionary during Castro's early years, but Cuban musicians continued to keep up with the latest developments by passing smuggled cassettes from one end of the island to another. And this is how D'Rivera came to truly appreciate jazz...
...child prodigy who sat in with Cuba's best musicians as early as the age of seven, D'Rivera went on to become a founding member of the Cuban super band, Irakere. Founded in the early 1970s, Irakere (whose name is a Yoruba meaning forest), an II-piece aggregation that drew on Afro-Cuban religion and folklore as well as jazz, rock and even classical music, was typical of the eclectic approach many Cuban bands took following the revolution...