Cuba Music Week is a live and online effort – both crowd sourced and curated – to highlight the importance and beauty of Cuban Music. One goal is to introduce you to ideas and music from this vibrant culture. A good place to start is our databases, listing the Cuban recordings here at the ARC, and glossaries of genres and instruments. Just for fun have a look at the galleries of record covers. This site will remain active as an online resource to make this culturally significant body of work readily available to people around the globe for study and enjoyment.

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Cha Cha Cha

The Cha Cha Cha was a mid-tempo dance craze that swept the world in the 1950s.  The first big hit was “La Engañadora” by violinist Enrique Jorrin, and charangas like Orquestra Aragón made it stick.  Everybody and their mother cut a cha cha record, and here’s a few from the 300 LPs at the ARC.               read more in genres

machito_palladium w charleston_aragon_cha w orquesta_aragon havana_sans_souci freddy_sateriale Cha Cha Rhythm cha14 montenegro percusive_latino pertinent_percussion cha_cha_cha ping_pong cha_cha_merengue_live_sound cha_cha_malibu pepito_pavon dance_date_havana disco_cha manny_lopez alfredito art_mooney manny_lopez chacha_monchito betty_white cha11 cha_cha_prado_rod_valdez cha_cha_rhythm_boys perez_prado chico_ofarrill eduardo_fernandez el_borinquen fred_astaire I_dreamt_I_danced jose_curbelo mr_flouride Orquesta_Aragon perez_prado rose_murphy raoul_martinez ricardo_juarez norman_leyden tito_puente_chacha_dance tito_puente2 tito_puente willie_martinez SPEAK-UP_2 cha8 cha2 cha3 cha1 jan_august cha19 cha7 cha4 cha5 cha6 cha9 cha10 cha12 cha13 cha15 cha16 cha21 cha26 cha20 cha18 cha22 cha23 cha24 cha17 cha25 cha27 cha28 cha29 cha30 cha31 cha32 cha33 cha34 cha6sml LookCha_Aweb Crazy_Jose copy
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all essays

  • Cuban Hip Hop
  • Diaz Top Ten + 6
  • Latunes
  • Manteca: A Story of Afro Cuban Jazz
  • The Rumba Scene
  • Who Sampled Who?

all galleries

  • 10" Cuban Discs
  • Almost Cuban
  • Cha Cha Cha
  • Cuban albums
  • Cuban Instruments
  • mambo y rumba
  • souvenirs
  • today’s horizontal picture from Havana

staff

• b.george - founder + director
• Fred Patterson - head archivist
• Alex Curtin - archivist

CUBA INTERNS + VOLUNTEERS
These folks did the tedious and important work of cataloging recordings, populating the links, sorting and re-sorting, data entry, the bulk of video harvesting and a great deal of the frantic last minute this-and-that.

• Manny Portillo
• Henry Bainbridge
• Jo-Ann Wong
• Harvey Ngai
• Nicholas Romaniello

ARC INTERNS + VOLUNTEERS 2016
These folks did everything else, freeing up time for us to work on Cuba Music Week.

• Brian Cummings
• Vincent Christopher
• James Desin
• Seth Schonberg
• James Ehrlich
• Joe Flynn

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Cuba Music Week
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