The Third Case This Year of the Barefoot Latin Dance Party

Back to Latin America this week, my friends, with a fresh batch of tasty vintage tracks from Cuba and Nueva Yorica.

This is one of my Barefoot Latin themes, where I showcase music created away from the big city glamour of Havana. This theme usually features a healthy dose of rustic son and other "country music" sounds from Cuba. But today I am focusing on the semi-cosmopolitan sounds of Santiago, Cuba's second city... the jewel on Cuba's eastern shoreline.

As noted before, the eastern part of Cuba (known locally as "El Oriente") was home to the sugar plantations that made up Cuba's primary Colonial era export. Accordingly, like the Southern US and Northern Brazil, this part of Cuba had a large number of slave laborers in the Colonial era, and Eastern Cuba still has a large demographic of citizens with African heritage. Santiago has a noticeably different ethnic makeup relative to Havana.

The musical tastes in Santiago tend to eschew the refined pleasures of pachanga, cha-cha, and mambo... this city goes in for guaguanco rumba, and even material more influenced by nearby Caribbean ports. Hints of merengue and soca are not uncommon. Today we look at these unique Cuban sounds... uptown, to a degree, but hardly polished.

First hour today starts with some old-timey gusto in the form of rumbas and son montunos. We move into some catchy, crowd-pleasing fare on our way to some campy sounds influenced by carnival reels from Haiti and other Caribbean islands. 

Hour two moves into the 60s and 70s, featuring mostly sounds from the melting pot of New York's latin scene. Influences of funk and soul increase as we build to the end of the show.