Laura Ruane

The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press

Cuba has been on many African-American bucket lists for a long time.

Music, arguably, is the main reason.

After all, Havana is where composer and trumpeter Mario Bauza hailed before he fell in love with Harlem and moved to New York City.

In 1940, Bauza and his brother-in-law and singer Frank Grillo, aka Machito, formed their own big band, Machito & his Afro-Cubans. They were founding fathers in fusion of Afro-Cuban music and American jazz, profoundly influencing such stars as Dizzy Gillespie, Celia Cruz and Ella Fitzgerald.

Machito & his Afro-Cubans touched every corner of the globe,” said Kwami Coleman, a musicologist and assistant professor at New York University.

Machito and Bauza are gone, but the creativity and energy live on in Cuba, Coleman said. He’ll make his second visit to the island in 2016.

In Cuba, “music is a part of everyone’s daily life: singing songs in sacred and secular context,” Coleman said, adding that in the USA, “maybe we’ve lost a little bit of that.”

Older African-Americans likely remember reading about Cuba in their youth: Fidel Castro’s revolution got a lot of ink in black newspapers in the USA, said Jackie Jones, an associate professor who chairs the multimedia program in the School of Global Journalism at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

These journalists “were looking at a country that had a lot of promise of addressing issues of race, which had some resonance with the civil rights movement in the [United] States,” Jones said.

And, although a “racial nirvana isn’t there,” Jones calls the island nation “simultaneously troubled and vibrant.”

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She recently made her third trip to Cuba, and looks forward to going again in May or June.

“This is a great time to go and watch its social economic and political evolution as it welcomes investment but seeks to retain what makes it quintessentially Cuban.”

Jones noted the Cuban government’s tourism literature doesn’t show how racially diverse its people are. Intermarriage likely means few Cubans are exclusively of one race.

Black Cubans are a racial minority, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book, whose 2012 estimate puts Cuba’s population as 64.1 percent white, 9.3 percent black and 26.6 percent mestizo. The latter is part-European, especially Spanish, and part-Native American.

Still, by some accounts, black- and mixed-race people comprise two-thirds of the population. And, elements of the country’s African heritage are many and varied.

“Cuba is not African-influenced. Its core root is Africa,” said Dash Harris. The USA-educated Panamanian-American is a co-founder of AfroLatino Travel offering curated tours and local guides at select Latin American and Caribbean destinations.

European diseases wiped out Cuba’s native population by the end of the 16th century. More than one million people were imported from Africa to work as slaves in Cuban agriculture, starting in the 1500s.

By the time slavery was outlawed there in 1886, many African expats already had gained freedom. They had first-hand knowledge of their homelands’ cultures, while establishing themselves as artisans and professionals.

Jamaican and Haitian descendants also add to the rich cultural heritage of Cuba today.

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“I was absolutely floored by how the African and Afro-descendant connections have held so strongly in day-to-day life,” said Harris, who’s visited the island four times in the past year.

Although Canadians and Europeans have frequented Cuba for decades, USA-origin travel is proliferating following the resumption of diplomatic relations and a relaxing of visa rules.

Those actions are inspiring new, Afro-heritage tour services and an urgency among some Americans to visit, now. Some fear the Afro-Cuban flavor will be diluted as the tourism pipeline expands.

“I wanted to experience the true culture in its most authentic form,” said Blair Younger, 35, a free-lance TV writer and producer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Her September visit to Havana and to the Viñales tobacco-growing region to the west included observing a “tambor,” a Santeria drum ceremony rooted in West Africa’s Yoruba religion, dancing at a salsa club, touring cigar and rum factories, and drinking with congenial Cubans.

Whenever feasible, Younger stayed at casas particulares, private homes akin to our bed & breakfast inns, and rode taxi collectivos – shared vehicles with set routes – to live more like a local.

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“It’s unlike any place I’ve seen,” said Younger, who’s traveled to a dozen countries so far.

In Cuba, the poverty was evident, Younger added, with people are more divided by class than by race. When going into hotels and clubs with a Havana local, she’d have to tell doorkeepers: “This is my friend. Let him in.”

Harris, who helped Younger with her itinerary, encourages visitors to Cuba to “go out on an individual adventure: Talk with people.”

But she cautions: “Don’t engage them in talk about politics unless they say it’s all right.”

And, unless the visitor makes it clear by body language that an impromptu conversation is welcome, Cubans on the street “still get harassed,” by authorities, so they’ll keep away from tourists,” Harris said.

You might have to weather a few hustlers to make a conversational connection, but it’s worth it, Harris said.

And soon, you might find yourself saying, “Que bola, asere (What’s up, friend)?

Follow Laura Ruane on Twitter: @Alvascribe