A second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist.
Ned SubletteEvery farm with slaves was a slave-breeding farm. Raising slaves was mostly a cottage industry.
Ned SubletteA 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.
Ned SubletteMusic is so essential to the Cuban character that you can't disentangle it from the history of the nation. the history of Cuban music is one of cultural collisions, of voluntary and forced migrations, of religions and revolutions.
Ned Sublette