Baila!

This extraordinary new work, a companion to the recent ADP title Afro-Cuban Music, picks up where that volume leaves off, focusing on the diffusion of Cuban popular musical styles throughout the Americas as well as the creation of new hybrids in places such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Latin New York. It documents, for the first time, the full scope of the literature on commercial Latin dance musics, from their emergence in the 1920s and ¿30s...
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This extraordinary new work, a companion to the recent ADP title Afro-Cuban Music, picks up where that volume leaves off, focusing on the diffusion of Cuban popular musical styles throughout the Americas as well as the creation of new hybrids in places such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Latin New York. It documents, for the first time, the full scope of the literature on commercial Latin dance musics, from their emergence in the 1920s and ¿30s to the present. The book¿s 5300 entries offer a treasure trove of information on the history and evolution of lesser-known regional styles such as Colombian champeta, Puerto Rican bomba y plena and Dominican bachata as well as such well-known transnational idioms as mambo, salsa and merengue. Of particular note is Baila¿s in-depth coverage of U.S.-based regional scenes in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as those found in Australia, Canada, France and Germany. This historical material is complemented by a comprehensive biographical section which helps illustrate the crucial role played by more than a 1000 individual artists, dancers and others in the music¿s trajectory from Cubop of the 1940s to the mambo and cha-cha-cha crazes of the 1950s, pachanga and boogaloo/Latin soul of the 1960s, salsa and charanga of the 1970s and Latin jazz of the 1980s and beyond. Citations range in date from 1930 to 2011 and encompass materials in all major European languages, with an emphasis on English, Spanish and French. Students, scholars and librarians will find Baila! to be an essential resource on Afro-Latin expressive culture¿its music and dance, language, literature, aesthetics, and more¿from North and South America to Europe, Africa and Japan.