Cuba and its music: from the First Drums to the Mambo

I've recently finished Ned Sublette's book. It's hefty - over six hundred pages - but it's the best book I've read on any form of popular music. It's the antithesis of Frank Zappa's description of rock journalism ("People who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.")

Sublette, a New York musician and music broadcaster, has undertaken a phenomenal amount of research covering a period stretching from prehistory to the fifties. One of the things the book seeks to do is to show how Afro-Cuban music has been a huge but hidden influence on other Western popular music, including jazz and rock and roll (after all, 'Louie Louie' is a chachachá).

There are lots of fascinating and provocative ideas in the book. He shows that the difference between North American and Afro-Cuban music basically has its origins in different regions of Africa, with 'swing' originating in deserts and savannahs and 'clave' having its roots in the forests. He also shows how earlier black African musical influences had already been important in shaping the European musics which mixed with the music of the slaves in Cuba to produce Afro-Cuban music.

Throughout the book he links the music with its social context, whether that context is seventeenth-century Africa, mediaeval Spain, or twentieth-century Cuba. Because of this it doesn't always make easy reading as some of the history which produced the music we love today included horrific brutality. But if you have any interest in Latin music (and perhaps even if you don't) it's a fascinating book and well worth taking the time to read.