Caribbean music (with Celia Cruz morsel)

Only five more midterms to grade!!! I'm gettting ready for a for class tomorrow in which we are going to talk about the roots of Caribbean music.
Here is Celia Cruz on TV with Sonora Matancera. I saw here in Berkeley when she was already in her seventies, but she sang and danced hard for at least two hours. Amazing.

Professor Zero turned me on Radio Batanga's music site, where one can listen to streaming audio in all genres of latin popular music. It's a wonderful way to find about about the latest hits or about songs that are old favorites. Although it's a commercial website, with lots of ads and mostly devoted to the popular music biz, it doesn't limit its playlists to the top of the charts. There are interviews, reviews, and links to videos.

But to learn more about the history of the music, and particularly or music of Africa and the African Diaspora (including African roots music in the Americas and its influence on music in Africa today) , Afropop Worldwide is great. They have archived feature articles, book and CD reviews, streaming audio playlists, and news from all over the music world. I find the site easy to use and generous. If you buy tunes from them, it helps support their mission of spreading knowledge about this music.

Their online music store, a great place to find music from all over the world and buy it without leaving most of your money in the hands of corporate distritutors, is run through Calabash Music, which bills itself as a Fair Trade Music site. Rather than organizing by musical genre, they divide the world geographically, and North American and South America are subdivided by country.