Queens of Havana
The Amazing Adventures of Anacaona, Cuba's Legendary All-Girl Dance Band
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“This evocative memoir is a joyous, rhythmic history” of the 11-sister dance band that broke musical and cultural barriers in 1930s Cuba and beyond (Publishers Weekly).
In the 1930s, Havana was the place to be for tourists, ex-pats, celebrities, and excitement-seekers. Nights were filled with drinking, dancing, romance, and the roar of infectious music spilling from cafés into the streets. It was a time and place immortalized by Hemingway, and a macho mecca where only men took the stage. That is until Alicia Castro, a thirteen-year-old greengrocer’s daughter, picked up a saxophone and led her sisters into the limelight.
With infectious melodies and saucy lyrics, the Sisters Castro—professionally known as Anacaona—became a dance-band of irresistible force. In her jubilant memoir, Queens of Havana, Alicia Castro tells of her incredible rise beyond her native city, to international stardom—swinging alongside legends from Dizzy Gillespie and Celia Cruz to Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway.
In an age that insisted women be seen and not heard, Alicia Castro and her unstoppable sisters grabbed the world by the ears and got it dancing to their beat. At eighty-seven-years old, Alicia’s stories are intoxicating and gloriously punctuated with more than 100 vintage photos, posters, and other memorabilia in a book that “reverberates with exotic echoes of a fabulous long-ago era” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This evocative memoir is a joyous, rhythmic history of the 11 sisters who formed the fabled Cuban orquesta Anacaona. Forced to abandon her studies after political events prompted university closings in 1932, Cuchito Castro got six of her younger sisters together to play son, a blend of African rhythms and Spanish melodies, even though women were thought incapable of mastering the complex style. The band attracted attention on the radio and at night in Havana's open-air cafes. As Cuchito's other sisters grew into their teens, they joined Anacaona, and the group soared to international fame with recordings, films, TV, appearances with jazz greats and triumphant European tours, as seen in the 140 ads, menus, photos and posters scattered throughout the text. Saxophonist Alicia, now 87, regales her niece Ingrid with tales of the sisters' romantic escapades, Havana nightlife and sensual melodic midnights. The Castro sisters' story reverberates with exotic echoes of a fabulous long-ago era.
