The Second Case This Year of the Barefoot Latin Dance Party

Amigos, we celebrate Super Bowl Sunday today with a killer set of tracks from Cuba. The "Barefoot" genre is a chance for me to step away from the big clubs of Havana and focus on music that was popular in more rural parts of Cuba, particularly in Cuba's second big city, Santiago.

We start today's set with some tracks that can truly be called Cuba's "country music." This style of music can sometimes be heard on the streets of Havana, or perhaps in a small bar, but this is hardly the type of urban dancefloor sounds that would ever be featured in a Havana club setting. One track in this opening set from Buena Vista alumnus Compay Segundo.

We move on to a set of tracks devoted to the rites of the various saints of Santero, the Cuban religion that marries Catholic saint personas to the spirit-gods of Yoruba, the African religion that came to Cuba with slaves from modern day Nigeria. Then we finish the first hour with some classic son, the music of septets and sextets that has remained a cherished and largely unaltered national music of Cuba for about a century.

The second hour today moves slightly uptown, generally incorporating a horn line. But the content here is still unmistakably "Oriental," or coming from the Eastern part of Cuba. We wrap up the show with a few numbers taken from the modern era.