African-derived religions enrich all aspects of Cuba's social, cultural, and everyday life, and encompass all ethnic and social groups. This work discusses the roles of music and dance as forms of Cuban religious expression and describes the specific instruments and symbols they employ.

This 'Biography of a runaway slave' is arguably the best-known book to have been written and published in revolutionary Cuba, being the testimonial narrative of Esteban Montejo, a former slave, runaway, and soldier in the Cuban wars of independence. The text is the collaboration between ethnographer Miguel Barnet and Montejo, the result of three years of tape-recorded interviews, transcribed, edited and annotated by Barnet. Montejo provides a first-hand account of slavery in nineteenth-century Cuba - the language, religion, music, and customs - and describes life in the sugar plantations and...