Victor Parra was a Chicago-area radio host, musician and bandleader who championed Afro-Cuban jazz music as the host of his weekly radio show, “Mambo Express,” on both WBEZ-FM and WDCB-FM. Parra was ...

Listening to this recording is similar to having a knowledgeable friend spin some tunes that fit together in many likely though not necessarily expected ways. It is a “mix tape” of sorts that features ...

Cuban bassist and composer Israel "Cachao" Lopez, who is credited with pioneering the mambo styleof music, died Saturday. He was 89. Known simply as Cachao, the Grammy-winning musician had fallen ill ...

Ry Cooder’s 1997 collaboration with a group of septuagenarian Cuban musicians, Buena Vista Social Club, sold 8 million copies and earned a Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Performance. It also earned ...

I started to seriously listen to music around 1972, when I became an active rather than passive listener, constantly searching for songs I'd never heard before. It was a great time to do it, because ...

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There are unlimited reasons to love Cuban music, but what draws me the most is the relentless, resilient joy at its heart. The island’s grooves have a century-long history of sparking international ...

SARAH WILLIS first visited Havana in February 2017. She was working in Miami with the New World Symphony Orchestra and figured she may as well take the hour-long flight across the Strait of Florida, ...

Second albums are notoriously difficult! The mixture of Mozart and mambo proved incredibly popular first-time round. There were more horn concertos to record, but I didn’t want to go to back to Cuba ...