New Orleans is of such key importance to American music because historical factors combined to make it the strongest center of African musical practice in the United States, and, cliches aside, that practice really did travel up the Mississippi and did spread overland.

Up through and including Lincoln, American politicians nursed a fantasy of repatriating blacks to Africa.

The two biggest hits (by Machito)... were about that enduring Cuban song topic-food: 'Sopa de pichn' [pigeon soup] and 'Paella'. If you think that all songs about food are double entendres for sex... Well, maybe all songs about food can be double entendres, but in many periods of Cuban history, for many people, food has been harder to get, and the subject of more fantasies, than sex.

In 1942 Cachao wrote a tune for Arcao, 'Rareza de Melitn,' with a memorable catchy tumbao. In 1957 Arcao recorded a reworking of it under the name 'Chanchullo'; and in 1962 Tito Puente reworked that into 'Oye como va,' still with that same groove. In this form, audibly the same, it powered Carlos Santana's multiplatinum 1970 cover version, close to three decades after Cachao first played it.

New Orleans is of such key importance to American music because historical factors combined to make it the strongest center of African musical practice in the United States, and, cliches aside, that practice really did travel up the Mississippi and did spread overland.

Black musicians rhythmicized the contredanse, creating musical styles which evolved into the habanera (also known as the tango) and, later, ragtime, as well as the danza, danzón, and ultimately the danzón mambo and its offspring the cha-cha-chá.

A laborer might last ten years or so before expiring. But individual workers in the death camp of sugar were survived by their culture, which was constantly re-Africanized by fresh arrivals. To that plantation culture, the music of our hemisphere owes no small debt.