Cuba! Second Line Meets Conga Line! Havana Jazz Festival 2020

     . . . . Yay, Our Vaquero -- who had so much to do with making this Cuban Jazz - New Orleans Jazz celebration happen!*

New Orleans and Cuban musicians join in Havana’s annual jazz festival, defying Trump’s efforts to weaken US-Cuba relations

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/jan/16/conga-and-carnival-havanas-jazz-festival-in-pictures

Additional coverage here 

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01/15/arts/15reuters-cuba-usa.html?

But dayem, even a nonby-lined Reuters report has to stick in the by now irrelevant designation "communist run Cuba." Shame on them.

... The visiting New Orleans musicians said they were frustrated it was so hard to come to Communist-run Cuba due to President Donald Trump's tightening of restrictions on U.S. travel to the Caribbean's largest island.
That tightening has hurt Cuba's tourism industry - one of the ailing economy's top earners of hard currency - that had benefited from a brief U.S.-Cuban detente between 2014 and 2016 under Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.

"Americans love Cuba, they will always want to come, so different restrictions frustrate us just as much as it frustrates you guys," said Hubbard....**

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*  Vaquero is in Havana right now, after leading Tierras Segrada (Sacred Ground), a religious culture and music experience, much of it far out in the country, with 3 - 4 events every day. For the rest of the month he's teaching an annual NYU music course there, which deliberately is scheduled to occur concurrently with the annual Havana Jazz Festival.  He did an enormous amount of work, along with some others, to make this Cuban - New Orleans musicians and groups come together as part of the Festival.  Yesterday he did a presentation in Spanish discussing the long connection musically and historically -- and economically then too -- between New Orleans and Cuba.

New Orleans is just sizzling these days with brilliant Caribbean musical adventure and cultural innovation.  New Orleans, Cuba and Haiti have truly become a cultural and artistic triangle.  New Orleans is where there is the greatest scope for Americans to experience this.

We / Postmambo are leading a music, culture, vodun and food New Orleans and Cajun Louisiana trip in March.  So many Frequent Rumberos / Postmambo Travelers are signed up, including people who actually live in New Orleans or have second homes there, or go there all the time anyway.  That's what has to be called endorsement of the Postmambo experience, right?

**   The regime basically has killed Postmambo in Cuba, thereby destroying much of our livelihood, but we're planning for 2020-20021, because, you know, we / all of us absolutely have to!  So many people's way of making a living, so many small businesses like ours, have been destroyed by Them.