Searching for the Origins of Salsa and Cuban Music

In the past three decades dozens of works on salsa, Cuban music, Latino dance forms, and Latin jazz have appeared in print. This growing bibliography has devel oped to some extent as part of a search for the roots of popular dance music both in the Latino diaspora in the United States and in the countries of origin of the Latino communities. The books reviewed here are recent examples of this emerging corpus of knowledge about Latino culture. Cesar Miguel Rondon's The Book of Salsa has finally been translated into English more than 25 years after its initial publication, a welcome contribution for which we owe immense gratitude to Frances R. Aparicio and her collaborator Jackie White. Better late than never. Ironically, this excellent treatise on a music that grew and devel oped in the United States was written in Caracas by a Venezuelan radio personality. To explain how that happened would deviate from our purpose here, but noted it must be

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