Tata Güines

The King of the Congas Tata Guines real name was Federico Aristides Soto. He was born in the early 1930's in a poor black neighbourhood in the town of Guines, just east of Havana, and made his first bongo drums from sausage and condensed milk cans. He became a legend playing the conga, a tall and narrow drum of Congolese origin brought to Cuba by African slaves. He performed with the top names in Cuban music like Arsenio Rodriguez, Chano Pozo, Bebo Valdes and Israel "Cachao" Lopez. Tata shared the stage with some of the world's most renowned performers during a career spanning more than six decades including Josephine Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra. Despite Tata's success in the United States, he returned to Cuba after Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959, saying he had never been able to get used to the racial segregation in the US at the time. Tata enjoyed renewed success in 2004 when he performed on the Grammy nominated hit album, Lagrimas Negras - Black Tears after spending years away from the public eye.