Tag Archives: cuba

B y the mid-2010s, Daymé Arocena had become a household name in her native Havana. She’d been called “the world’s next jazz phenomenon,” and her work with the Cuban-Canadian jazz band Maqueque helped win a 2015 Juno Award. When she’d walk down the street, people would stop her, recognizing her …

Cuba is roughly 1,300 miles away, but in a rehearsal space in downtown Manhattan, it doesn’t feel all that far. Cradling their percussion instruments, horns, and guitars, a ten-piece band of musicians, some from Latin America, preparing to play a sinuous piece of son Cubano, as a theater crew — …

Saturday Night Live monologues can run the gamut from cringeworthy and silly to movingly sincere. On Saturday night, host Ana de Armas’s debut SNL monologue fell into the latter category. After telling the audience at Studio 8H that she learned English by watching Friends after immigrating to the U.S. from …

M aybe it was the excitement of post-lockdown celebrations or the simple triumph of getting through the worst of the pandemic, but the energy felt different at the 22nd annual Latin Grammys back in November of 2021. Thousands of people, dressed in shimmering gowns and slick suits, had gathered at …

Cimafunk was racing through the airport in Havana last month after spending five days in Cuba with his family. He had to catch a flight to Florida, but just before he boarded, his phone kept ringing again and again. When he finally answered, his team was on the other line, …

Pablo Milanés, the legendary Cuban singer-songwriter widely known as Pablito, died in Madrid on Monday. He was 79. The founder of the Cuban nueva trova (the new song movement), Milanés toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution. The Latin Grammy-winning singer recorded dozens of albums and …

Denis Solís moved to Novi Sad, Serbia, in November 2021 — quietly, wearily, without a job lined up. Of his large and tightknit extended family, only two cousins joined him. And now, every day, when he leaves his apartment to wander unfamiliar streets in search of work — as a …

“Patria Y Vida,” the protest anthem that won Song of the Year and Best Urban Song at this year’s Latin Grammys, is getting a full-length documentary through a partnership between Exile Content Studio and composer/musicians Beatriz Luengo and Yotuel Romero. The film will explore how “Patria Y Vida” became a …