Among the nearly 90,000 Cubans who settled in New York City and Miami in
the 1940s and 1950s were numerous musicians and entertainers, black and
white, who did more than fill dance halls with the rhythms of the rumba,
mambo, and cha cha cha. In her history of music and race in midcentury
America, Christina D. Abreu argues that these musicians, through their
work in music festivals, nightclubs, social clubs, and television and
film productions, played central roles in the development of Cuban,
Afro-Cuban, Latino, and Afro-Latino identities and communities. Abreu
draws from previously untapped oral histories, cultural materials, and
Spanish-language media to uncover the lives and broader social and
cultural significance of these vibrant performers.
Keeping in view the wider context of the domestic and international
entertainment industries, Abreu underscores how the racially diverse
musicians in her study were also migrants and laborers. Her focus on the
Cuban presence in New York City and Miami before the Cuban Revolution of
1959 offers a much needed critique of the post-1959 bias in Cuban
American studies as well as insights into important connections between
Cuban migration and other twentieth-century Latino migrations.