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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9780767000925 Format: Box set, Color, NTSC ISBN: 0767000927 Label: New Video Group Manufacturer: New Video Group Number Of Discs: 1 Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: New Video Group Release Date: April 24, 2001 Running Time: 171 minutes Sales Rank: 43940 Studio: New Video Group Theatrical Release Date: 1994
Description: Before "World Music" ever appeared in record stores, Americans danced the Rumba and Mambo and sang along with Xavier Cugat and Desi Arnaz. Join host Harry Belafonte for a globe-trotting, star-studded celebration tracing the fiery history of Latin Music.
Amazon.com: Latin music has always been a fixture in American popular culture, but its history reflects centuries of change and complexity from diverse sources. Roots of Rhythm, an incredible three-hour film originally shown on PBS in 1997, traces the development of this exciting musical genre, going back 500 years across three continents. Hosted by the famed Caribbean American entertainer Harry Belafonte, the film begins in West Africa, in the villages that ring with the ancestral anthems of sacred Yoruba beats and bata drums. The focus shifts to Spain, where modern-day troubadours sing their haunting, Moorish-tinged ballads and Gypsies dance their heated flamenco dances. Those musical influences are brought together by the transatlantic slave trade in the island of Cuba, where enslaved Africans and Spanish immigrants mixed and melded each others' music into a myriad of new, hybrid creations like the rumba, tumba francesa, danzon, and mambo. Belafonte quotes a poet who said, "Cuban music is a love affair between the African drum and the Spanish guitar."
In America, this love affair bloomed in New York, where Cuban and African American jazz musicians like Machito, Mario Bauza, and Dizzy Gillespie melded mambo rhythms to bebop, creating Latin jazz. Belafonte then brings us to the dazzling timbales master Tito Puente and vocalist Celia Cruz, who reigned as the king and queen of salsa, the stateside version of Cuban dance music that emerged in the '60s. The film offers revealing interviews and music clips with many Latin music stars, including Gloria Estefan of Miami Sound Machine and Panamanian Rubén Blades. The rare archival footage features Dizzy Gillespie's 1948 number "Manteca," bandleader Xavier Cugat's "Gypsy Mambo," and a cartoon clip of Donald Duck doing "Tico Tico." After watching this engaging and encyclopedic film, you'll never dance to Latin music the same way again. --Eugene Holley Jr.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Latin Roots
This is a great documentary of who we truly are in our music! This tells our whole musical history of how our music all began! A must for latin fans!
Rating: - Great for the money
I was amazed by this DVD. It's actually three programs in one, totalling 3 hours. Harry Belafonte is an amazing host, and he travelled to Cuba, Africa and Spain to research this. I was excited to see the origins of Cuban music, and it made me wish I had been there.
Rating: - The impact of african culture on pop music and dance
I bought this item and would say that it was everything I wished for and more. Educational and entertaining. It really goes deeply into Caribbean culture and demonstrates how music and dance from west africa share much of an almost identical history due to slavery and colonisation. It traces musics and dance directly from Africa to the Caribbean and North America( the Americas). Highly recommended.
Rating: - Roots of Rhythm
If you want to know the roots of Cuban music you must see this DVD. Mr. Harry Belafonte takes you on a tour through Africa, Spain, Cuba and finally to the United States. On this DVD he made a thorough investigation and explains how the Afro-Cuban music evolved from the African/Spanish ancestors and spread to other regions including Argentina. Also he shows how the U.S borrowed the Cuban beat to make songs Like "little Darling" by the Diamonds among other hits in America where the lyrics are in English with the Cuban influence sound. He interviews Gloria Estefan, Celia Cruz, Dizzy Gillespie and ... Read More
Rating: - Roots Of Rhythm
Wow! I don't even know where to begin...it's a great documentary on the history of Cuba, music, roots, rhythm, culture and the people. It was beautifully edited! Belafonte did a wonderful job in explaining the history of cuba's music. You will want to stand up and begin to dance. Why sit down?
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