"Some of the mightiest Senegalese Afro-Cuban tracks the world has ever heard"
-- BBC

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This year, 2019, marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, a major shift in history which resonated far and wide — from Indonesia to Senegal. Cuba offered a vision of another world, detached from the harsh exploitative realities of colonial rule and apartheid, and made the betterment of life on the African continent its utmost priority.

“What other country," Nelson Mandela said in Havana in 1991, "can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?"

“We are not only a Latin American country,” Fidel Castro proclaimed in a 1975 speech, “we are also an Afro-Latin country... the blood of Africa runs abundantly through our veins.”

For Senegal, importing Cuban culture could achieve the ultimate goal — dignity — and radically change the notion of another — modernity.

Cuban music for Senegalese was the portal to a more just modern world. For Dakar’s youth, with access to a slew of new nightclubs in the 1960s and ‘70s, dancing to Cuban music was a... more
credits
released February 22, 2019

Produced by Ostinato Records
Project Coordination by Janto Djassi
Restoration & Remastering by Mike Graves
Cover Design & Illustration by Lauren O'Neill
Additional Design by Pete 'Piwi' White
Special Thanks to Adamantios Kafetzis (Teranga Beat) & Anne Rasmussen
All tracks licensed courtesy of Alioune Kassé, son of band founder and leader Ibrahim Kassé