The Middle Passage—that terrible, triangular trade of black, brown, and beige men, women, and children of Africa—dispersed an infinite variety of gods, dances, instruments, chants, and musical forms to the New World. In the United States, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic those far-flung sounds became the soundtracks of our civilization: jazz, Latin jazz, rumba, tango, samba, bomba y plena, and meringue. Though they all spring from the same sub-Saharan source, these complex and often confounding genres test any musician who tries to blend them into a unifying whole. But since the latter half of the '90s, and at the beginning of this century, the Cuban-born, Spain-based pianist-composer Omar Sosa has met... More >>>