Word: cubans
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Access to recording studios is also well out of reach for the average Cuban, who takes home about $20 a month. Even the prices for a boom box and a turntable--the two launching pads of the U.S. hip-hop explosion--are prohibitively high. So only a few raperos have had the privilege of actually making a CD. Cuban rap thus evolved first as a live art form. "Hip-hop is not a good business here yet," admits Fernandez. "Very few people can afford to buy the CDs, and most of the clubs can only charge a $1 cover, which...
...sampler and keyboard for the studio in his aging Spanish-style home in Havana. Thus equipped, he has promoted, produced or managed a dozen or so hip-hop acts, including Cuba's founding fathers of rap, Amenaza, which later reformed as Orishas. Herrera also produced the U.S.-released CD Cuban Hip-Hop All Stars Vol. 1 (Papaya Records), one of the first compilations to capture the new wave of raperos. "Cuba is one of the last places in the world where hip-hop arrived, and that actually gives us an advantage," Herrera argues. "We have a chance to fulfill what...
...Alfonso, 28, is talking about his upcoming hip-hop/son fusion album titled X-More. He also has some sharp words about the Buena Vista Social Club, the geezer vocal group that popularized prerevolution balladry everywhere but Cuba. "People think because of Ry Cooder and Buena Vista that Cuban music became better known," says Alfonso, who is also a member of the hot fusion group Sintesis. "That may be true, but it set us back 40 years. Now we are fighting against the mythological vision of the old Cuba, the Cuba of the Tropicana Club and old cars...
HAVANA BALL In 1996 American blues guitarist Ry Cooder gathers some of the greatest veteran performers in Cuban music to collaborate on the album Buena Vista Social Club. The success of the bestselling, Grammy-winning recording spawns a documentary of the same name by Wim Wenders, as well as a worldwide tour, and brings the lilting, sensuously rhythmic music from the old Havana of the 1940s and '50s to an international audience...
BABALU Famed bandleader Desi Arnaz creates a frenzy for la conga in Miami before bringing Cuban music to TV audiences on the sitcom I Love Lucy...