In 1917, Ramon Santamaria Rodriquez was born into poverty in Havana, Cuba. Nicknamed “Mongo” (a tribal chief in Senegal), he began playing the conga drum at an early age and as a teen, Mongo ...

On many levels, The Conga Kings’ Jazz Descargas is authentic Afro-Cuban jazz. For starters, Carlos “Patato” Valdes and Candido Camero have been Afro-Cuban music pioneers for decades. Patato is ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

“JC” Johnny Conga, a Volcano Percussion endorsee, has been performing for 45 years, as a “multi-percussionist-specialist”, in the Art of Afro-Caribbean Drumming, and Latin-Jazz music. Some of the ...

Drummer Ed Fast carried his Conga-Bop septet through two sets of lighthearted Latin jazz at Hartford’s Asylum Hill Congregational Church Friday. Moreover, he added a dramatic element to the concert by ...

Previously I have written about the differences between Afro-Cuban jazz and American jazz and examined the reasons why the descendants of the same African ancestors, living only 90 miles apart in the ...