My Turn: Mambo On My Mind

What’s an old white man like me doing teaching Afro-Cuban music, art and history? I grew up in El Paso, Texas, an early training center for a globalized world. At El Paso’s Dudley School, around 1944, I saw a good-looking Mexican-American girl lead the entire school in a mass conga line. She was clearly calling us to somewhere else.

I came closer to that “somewhere else” when my father gave me my first record, a 78 of “Canto Karabalí,” by the great Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. I had no idea what “Song of Calabar” meant, but the melody got to me. It was an acoustical Tarot card that said, “This is your future.”"*

*From: http://www.newsweek.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

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