Cuba is a country with no historical precedents: economically poor, but culturally rich; visibly mildewed, but architecturally magnificent; infuriating, yet at the same time, strangely uplifting. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean meet. It is south of both the U.S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica.

Across its cities and towns, Cuba hemorrhages music; a dynamic mix of styles with echoes of Africa, flickers of colonial Spain, ghosts of Taino tribes, and cultural idiosyncrasies imported from Haiti, Jamaica, France and even China. It's an eclecticism that's mirrored in the country's dance, architecture, language, religion, and - most emphatically - its rainbow of people. 

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