Horacio el Negro Hernandez & Robby Ameen | Robby and Negro at the Third World War | American Clavé

I guess we could start tracing this music to Negro in Cuba in the early nineteen-eighties, when, still a kid, he was arrested for playing Jack Bruce’s “Sunshine of Your Love” in Havana. Jack was thrilled, in fact, to find out about that music still being subversive somewhere in the world. But the deep subversive element of the story is also Negro defying rules and expectations and playing what he needed to play, in spite of the consequences. Given his intoxicatingly musical touch of subversive musical adventures (now, outside of Cuba, the adventure and chances, and their effect, are bigger and more fluid), and the defiance is just a small part of his musical genius. His musical ideas are spectacular. But, of course, there’s more. — Kip Hanrahan Continue reading