Urban/Global Politics

Early on in her masterful book Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer alludes to a double meaning embedded in her subtitle: “History in the first sense refers to what happened; in the second, to what is said to have happened.” Cuba’s history, Ferrer tells us, is likewise two histories. It is simultaneously a narrative of freedom […]

One day Artemio Morelia, a singer and maracas player for an obscure Colombian salsa band called Grupo Renacimiento, awoke and found himself transformed into a robot. Haunted by visions of HAL 9000, he was suddenly acutely aware of the coldness and the distractions of a constantly plugged-in world. “Memory is dying,” he sings on his […]

Last week actor John Leguizamo voiced strong opposition to the announcement that James Franco had been cast in the role of Fidel Castro in the upcoming independent film, “Alina of Cuba”, based on the life of Castro’s daughter Alina Fernández.  “How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well?” lamented Leguizamo on an Instagram […]

In the late 1990s, when Ricky Martin dominated the record industry with a new kind of Latin pop stardom, he captivated everyone with a song laden with postmodern irony. “Livin’ la Vida Loca” was more based on arena rock and Jamaican ska than it was on “Latin,” or Afro-Cuban music, and it gave a slightly […]

On New Year’s Eve 2020, the saxophonist Miguel Zenón and his longtime collaborator, the pianist Luis Perdomo, took the stage at the Jazz Gallery in Manhattan to perform a makeshift duet concert that would be recorded for a live album. The set list included a collection of classic Latin American boleros they were fond of, reimagined through […]

When the groundbreaking pianist Chick Corea died unexpectedly, at 79, in February 2021, he left a legacy of experimentation, preserving and expanding the jazz tradition. Over more than a half-century, he deftly navigated the music’s continually shifting boundaries. Corea started his career playing with the Afro-Cuban percussionist Willie Bobo and spent time with the bossa nova […]

Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico Rocío Zambrana Duke University Press It’s become increasingly obvious that the need for wealth redistribution, “the issue that blocks the horizon,” as Franz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth is perhaps the central issue in any hope for progressive change. Wealth inequality has accelerated in what many perceive […]

Faced with austerity, privatisation, and the further erosion of democratic rights, Puerto Rico is entering a crucial stage of political upheaval. Last month, a coalition of workers, students and activists – led by primary school teachers – staged a series of demonstrations demanding higher wages. Galvanised by slogans such as ‘El pueblo antes de la deuda’ […]

As I sat through a screening of West Side Story at a Lincoln Square movie theater—literally in the same neighborhood portrayed in the film—I couldn’t escape a growing realization. These days, we are trapped in a cycle of repetition, one in which the gnarled conflicts and perhaps small triumphs of the postwar era repeat themselves over and […]

A few months ago in a Tallahassee, Fla., recording studio, the Cuban vocalist and composer Cimafunk was engaged in a climactic meeting of the minds with the Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton when they stumbled on a fascinating connection between African American and Afro-Cuban music. Cimafunk, born Erik Iglesias Rodríguez, was scatting out the 1950s smash “Los Marcianos,” which instantly […]