Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III, known as Desi Arnaz, was a Cuban-American actor, musician, producer, and bandleader. He played Ricky Ricardo on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, in which he co-starred with his wife Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball are credited as the innovators of the syndicated rerun, which they pioneered with the I Love Lucy series.
Salsa music is a style of Caribbean music, combining elements of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and American influences. Because most of the basic musical components predate the labeling of salsa, there have been many controversies regarding its origin. Most songs considered as salsa are primarily based on son montuno and son Cubano, with elements of cha-cha-chá, bolero, rumba, mambo, jazz, R&B, rock, bomba, and plena. All of these elements are adapted to fit the basic Son montuno template when performed within the context of salsa.
Bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It has been called the "quintessential Latin American romantic song of the twentieth century".
Xavier Cugat was a Spanish musician and bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a leading figure in the spread of Latin music. In New York City, he was the leader of the resident orchestra at the Waldorf–Astoria before and after World War II. He was also a cartoonist and a restaurateur. The personal papers of Xavier Cugat are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.
Dámaso Pérez Prado was a Cuban bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger who popularized the mambo in the 1950s. His big band adaptation of the danzón-mambo proved to be a worldwide success with hits such as "Mambo No. 5", earning him the nickname "King of the Mambo". In 1955, Prado and his orchestra topped the charts in the US and UK with a mambo cover of Louiguy's "Cherry Pink ". He frequently made brief appearances in films, primarily of the rumberas genre, and his music was featured in films such as La Dolce Vita.
Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré Gutiérrez, better known as Benny Moré, was a Cuban singer, bandleader and songwriter. Due to his fluid tenor voice and his great expressivity, he was known variously as "El Bárbaro del Ritmo" and "El Sonero Mayor". Moré was a master of the soneo – the art of vocal improvisation in son cubano – and many of his tunes developed this way. He often took part in controversias with other singers, including Cheo Marquetti and Joseíto Fernández. Apart from son cubano, Moré was a popular singer of guarachas, cha cha cha, mambo, son montuno, and boleros.
The Mambo Kings is a 1992 musical drama film based on the 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. The film was directed and produced by Arne Glimcher, and stars Armand Assante, Antonio Banderas, Cathy Moriarty and Maruschka Detmers. Set in the early 1950s, the story follows Cesar (Assante) and Nestor Castillo (Banderas), brothers and aspiring musicians who find success and stardom after fleeing from Havana, Cuba to New York City to escape danger. The film marks Glimcher's directing debut, and features Banderas in his first English-language role.
Chesterfield is a brand of cigarette, named after Chesterfield County, Virginia. The brand is owned by conglomerate Altria and produced by its subsidiary Philip Morris USA.
Pablo Rodríguez Lozada, better known as Tito Rodríguez, was a Puerto Rican singer and bandleader. He started his career singing under the tutelage of his brother, Johnny Rodríguez. In the 1940s, both moved to New York, where Tito worked as a percussionist in several popular rhumba ensembles, before directing his own group to great success during the 1950s. His most prolific years coincided with the peak of the mambo and cha-cha-cha dance craze. He also recorded boleros, sones, guarachas and pachangas.
Alberto Naranjo [nah-rahn'-ho] was a Venezuelan musician. His mother, the singer Graciela Naranjo, was a radio, film and television pioneer in her homeland. Largely self-taught, Naranjo embarked on a similar musical course, becoming – like his mother – one of Venezuela's icons of contemporary popular music.
Israel López Valdés, better known as Cachao, was a Cuban double bassist and composer. Cachao is widely known as the co-creator of the mambo and a master of the descarga. Throughout his career he also performed and recorded in a variety of music styles ranging from classical music to salsa. An exile in the United States since the 1960s, he only achieved international fame following a career revival in the 1990s.
Oscar Jerome Hijuelos was an American novelist.
The Mambo Kings is the soundtrack to the 1992 film of the same name, based on Oscar Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Artists featured on the album include Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Benny Moré, Arturo Sandoval, Linda Ronstadt and Los Lobos. It also features the Mambo All-Stars, a band composed of studio sidemen from New York City and Los Angeles. With only a couple of exceptions, the tracks were made specifically for the film. The 2000 Elektra updated edition adds a remix of Tito Puente's "Ran Kan Kan" by Olga Tañón and a rendition of "Beautiful Maria of My Soul" featuring Antonio Banderas and Compay Segundo of Buena Vista Social Club fame.
Trova is a style of Cuban popular music originating in the 19th century. Trova was created by itinerant musicians known as trovadores who travelled around Cuba's Oriente province, especially Santiago de Cuba, and earned their living by singing and playing the guitar. According to nueva trova musician Noel Nicola, Cuban trovadors sang original songs or songs written by contemporaries, accompanied themselves on guitar, and aimed to feature music that had a poetic sensibility. This definition fits best the singers of boleros, and less well the Afrocubans singing funky sones or even guaguancós and abakuá. It rules out, perhaps unfairly, singers who accompanied themselves on the piano.
American literature in Spanish in the United States dates back as 1610 when the Spanish explorer Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published his epic poem Historia de Nuevo México. He was an early chronicler of the conquest of the Americas and a forerunner of Spanish-language literature in the United States given his focus on the American landscape and the customs of the people. However, it was not until the late 20th century that Spanish language literature written by Americans was regularly published in the United States.
Ernest AnthonyPuente Jr., commonly known as TitoPuente, was an American musician, songwriter, bandleader, timbalero, and record producer. He composed dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz music.
José Curbelo was a Cuban-born American pianist and manager. Curbelo was a key figure in Latin jazz in New York City in the 1940s and helped to popularize Mambo and the cha cha dance in the 1950s.
César Portillo de la Luz was a Cuban musician, lyricist and composer. Born in Havana, Cuba, Portillo is credited with founding the filin music genre. The Miami Herald described Portillo as "a fundamental author of Latin American music" and "one of Cuba's most celebrated composers". Portillo is also cited as "the most distinguished lyricist of his generation" and "one of the most prolific Cuban composers of the twentieth century".
Latino literature is literature written by people of Latin American ancestry, often but not always in English, most notably by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans, many of whom were born in the United States. The origin of the term "Latino literature" dates back to the 1960s, during the Chicano Movement, which was a social and political movement by Mexican Americans seeking equal rights and representation. At the time, the term "Chicano literature" was used to describe the work of Mexican-American writers. As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
