
1968 saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy; black athletes staged a silent demonstration at the Summer Olympics and the popular Sci-Fi series, Star Trek aired America’s first interracial kiss.
Also, it was the year the Cuban percussionists, CARLOS “PATATO” VALDES and EUGENIO “TOTICO” ARANGO captured the spirit of New York’s emerging rumba scene.
“We wanted to capture the essence of the streets with something new,” said Patato in a 2007 interview with Latin Beat magazine, “so we added the tres and the bass, an idea that would be picked up later by Los Papines. We wanted it to be danceable and with musical variation, and believe it or not, now after close to thirty years it’s still selling.”
The “variation” was the inclusion of the bassist, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, a founding father of the mambo, and the tresero Arsenio Rodriguez, the granddaddy of Afro-Cuban music.
