“Maybe you won't like steel band. It's possible. But it's been said that the Pied Piper had a steel band helping him on his famous visit to Hamelin. ” When the US Navy distributed this press release, anx ...

Derived from the nationalist writings of José Martí, the concept of Cubanidad (Cubanness) has always imagined a unified hybrid nation where racial difference is nonexistent and nationality trumps all other ...

Musical Life in Guyana is the first in-depth study of Guyanese musical life. It is also a richly detailed description of the social, economic, and political conditions that have encouraged and sometimes ...

An iconic symbol and sound of the Lucumí/Santería religion, Afro-Cuban batá are talking drums that express the epic mythological narratives of the West African Yoruba deities known as orisha. By imitating ...

In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth ...

Who changed Bob Marley’s famous peace-and-love anthem into “Come to Jamaica and feel all right?”

When did the Rastafarian fighting white colonial power become the smiling Rastaman spreading beach towels ...

Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, the Itals, the Ethiopians—they all dropped dazzling proverbs into their best-known reggae tunes.

“What come bad in the morning, can't come good in the evening. ”

“They ...