In his column this week, Jeff Weiss talks with renowned conga player Poncho Sanchez about the unlikely gringo who put him on. Today we've got another Sanchez story about an even stranger encounter — ...

In 1917, Ramon Santamaria Rodriquez was born into poverty in Havana, Cuba. Nicknamed “Mongo” (a tribal chief in Senegal), he began playing the conga drum at an early age and as a teen, Mongo ...

Larry McDonald is one of the most accomplished percussionists in the world. Honored in Jamaica in 2011 with a lifetime achievement award, for over fifty years McDonald has recorded and toured with ...

One of the great Cuban conga players and percussionists to come in the wake of Chano Pozo, he has been a constant source of authentic Afro-Cuban rhythms since his arrival in the early ‘50’s. Born ...

"I'm the very first local bongo player, conga player, and timbales player . . . Nobody played those before me." So says the veteran entertainer Freeman 'King' Trott. Young Freeman heard the music of ...