The death of Cuban conga master Carlos "Patato" Valdes this past December provides a sad opportunity to dig out one of his best-known recordings — which also happens to be a groundbreaking piece of ...

Cuban percussionist Miguel “Anga” Diaz, an acclaimed conga master who perfected a dazzling five-drum technique with a versatility that allowed him to span genres from progressive jazz to traditional ...

In 1917, Ramon Santamaria Rodriquez was born into poverty in Havana, Cuba. Nicknamed “Mongo” (a tribal chief in Senegal), he began playing the conga drum at an early age and as a teen, Mongo ...

“JC” Johnny Conga, a Volcano Percussion endorsee, has been performing for 45 years, as a “multi-percussionist-specialist”, in the Art of Afro-Caribbean Drumming, and Latin-Jazz music. Some of the ...

Tata Guines, 77, a conga drummer who helped popularize Afro-Cuban rhythms worldwide, died Monday outside Havana after being hospitalized for hypertension and kidney problems. Known as the “King of the ...

With so many new and exciting additions to Natal's catalogue including timbales, West African drums and cajons (not to mention Marshall's distribution strengths), the future for Natal seems rosier ...

He brought Afro-Cuban influences to American ensembles and dazzled audiences with his virtuosic multiple-drum technique. By Neil Genzlinger “When you talk about percussion, particularly the evolution ...

Previously I have written about the differences between Afro-Cuban jazz and American jazz and examined the reasons why the descendants of the same African ancestors, living only 90 miles apart in the ...