The conga player who performed with Dizzy Gillespie in his youth was among an impressive line-up of master iconoclasts at a historic Miami concert honoring mambo originator Israel "Cachao" Lopez. By ...

My life changed in March 1950. I ran into mambo on a spring break trip to Mexico City. Mambo, an intricately blended Afro-Cuban dance music, involved me in a world beyond myself, a world that ...

HAD YOU lived in the six-story walkup at 500 LaSalle St. in the 1980s, the one with the statue of an ibis over the doorway, Cesar Castillo would have been your super – the old Spanish guy in the ...

Johnny Conga comes from a long line of illustrious tumbadora (conga) players. From the musical evidence on Breaking Skin, this genealogy may begin with the likes of Chano Pozo, Mongo Santamaria, Tata ...