Timba

Cuban music is recognized unanimously as a major historical force behind Latin American popular music, and as an important player in the development of US popular music and jazz. However, the music produced on the island after the Revolution in 1959 has been largely overlooked and overshadowed by the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. The Revolution created the conditions for the birth of a type of highly sophisticated popular music, which has grown relatively free from market pressures. These conditions premised the new importance attained by Afro-Cuban dance music during the 1990s, when the island entered a period of deep economic and social crisis that has shaken Revolutionary institutions from their foundations. Vincenzo Perna investigates the role of black popular music in post-Revolutionary Cuba, and in the 1990s in particular. The emergence of timba is analysed as a distinctively new style of Afro-Cuban dance music. The controversial role of Afro-Cuban working class culture is highlighted, showing how this has resisted co-optation into a unified, pacified vision of national culture, and built musical bridges with the transnational black diaspora. Musically, timba represents an innovative fusion of previous popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban styles with elements of hip-hop and other African-American styles like jazz, funk and salsa. Timba articulates a black urban youth subculture with distinctive visual and choreographic codes. With its abrasive commentaries on issues such as race, consumer culture, tourism, prostitution and its connections to the underworld, timba demonstrates at the 'street level' many of the contradictions of contemporary Cuban society. After repeatedly colliding with official discourses, timba has eventually met with institutional repression. This book will appeal not only to ethnomusicologists and those working on popular music studies, but also to those working in the areas of cultural and Black studies, anthropology, Latin American st

Timba and Vati are named after lions: and two black kittens against the world is the pact they make when they are abandoned in a ditch. But when Timba is eventually found by a young boy, Leroy, he is alone and starving. Leroy has a tough life and that is something Timba can relate to - he finds it impossible not to love the sad little boy and be his friend. Through Leroy Timba also meets Angie, Leroy's teacher, and they forge a special bond - Angie will help him find Vati, whatever it takes. Can these two black kittens find their way back to each other, and use their cat power to heal the lives of the people they love?

Presents the online catalog of imported percussion instruments and recordings available from Talking Drums. Allows users to browse by instrument type or by ethnic region. Notes the return policy and monthly specials. Includes a workshop schedule. Posts contact information via toll free telephone number and e-mail. Links to ethnomusicology resources.

An ethnography of music and dance exploring the economic, social, and ideological constraints under which social classes and racial groups interact