This week we are going to look at the music of Cuban composer Amadeo Roldán.

Roldán, as with the others we've discussed, was alive at a time of cultural revolution in an increasingly post-colonial western hemisphere. Rather than continue to import culture from Europe, groups like the Pan-American Association of Composers (established by Varèse and others) were formed to get at the question, "what is the music of the Americas?" For a nation like Cuba, whose rich community stems from diasporic Africans, indigenous populations, European settlers, and a mixture of the three, there was plenty of culture from which to draw.

Roldán, who studied music in Spain, became one of the leaders of the Afro-Cubanismo movement, drawing on the tools (read: instruments and rhythms) of Cuba to create new orchestra music, indeed a new orchestra. In fact, it is Roldán who is responsible for the first work for percussion alone (see below).

From a percussionist perspective, imagine a world without the following instruments (to name a few): cowbell, claves, bongos, congas, vibraslap, maracas, guiro. In the words of Alejo Carpentier, contemporary of Roldán in the world of Cuban literature, "The present generation still remembers the wonder we felt when we first encountered the instruments of the eastern province." (Music in Cuba).