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 ...

My introduction to music came by the way of my cousin Nathan Robinson aka "The Witch Doctor" when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I could sit and listen to him play all day. He gave me my first Conga ...

He brought Afro-Cuban influences to American ensembles and dazzled audiences with his virtuosic multiple-drum technique. By Neil Genzlinger “When you talk about percussion, particularly the evolution ...