Search - Lydia Cabrera and Josefina Tarafa :: Havana & Matanzas, Cuba 1957: Bata, Bembe and Palo Songs

These recordings, made just a few years before Fidel Castro?s rise to power, reflect Afro-Cuban musical and spiritual life in Havana and around the sugar cane mills of Matanzas. In 1957, Lydia Cabrera and Josefina Tarafa captured a fascinating snapshot of African slave-descendant communities performing their religious songs and ceremonies. Influences from present-day Nigeria, Angola, and Benin became some of the critical components of a vital religious movement in the Cuban countryside where linguistic, symbolic, and musical elements blended over time. As reflections of evolving practices, these recordings, are considered a soundtrack to Cabrera?s writings on Afro-Cuban religions and are the perfect complement to volumes one and two.