Cuban girl band roars up charts 70 years on
Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter
The six rollicking songs may have been recorded 70 years ago by a
forgotten Cuban girl band but in the past four days nearly 50,000 people
have downloaded them from Times Online.
Yesterday they sat in 26th position on the iTunes podcast chart,
sandwiched between the best of Chris Moyles Radio 1 show and the second
series of Doctor Who.
Anacaona was made up of 11 sisters from a working-class family who
became a sensation in the nightclubs and cafés of prerevolutionary Havana.
George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Nat "King" Cole were among those who
went to hear them play their frenzied son dance music, and they toured
to Paris and New York at the end of the 1930s.
Like the much better-known musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club,
they then faded into obscurity after Fidel Castro sealed Cuba off from
the rest of the world.
Alicia Castro, 80, the youngest surviving member of the band, has
written their story in a book entitled Anacaona.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1637465.ece
No comments:
Post a Comment