ABSTRACT
Cuba is exceptional in the Spanish Caribbean in the degree of attention it has given to its links-historical, cultural, and ideological-with Africa. Strictly speaking, David Byrne's Dancing with the Enemy was not the first recording of postrevolutionary Cuban popular music to be distributed in the US marketplace. The next attempt to market Cuban dance music in the United States— Luaka Bop's 1991 Dancing with the Enemy—had an important advantage over Los Van Van's Songo recording: it was produced by David Byrne. With his considerable status and prestige, Byrne was able to obtain promotion and distribution for Dancing with the Enemy, thereby introducing world-music audiences to the range and quality of popular music that had been produced in Cuba over the preceding decades. Although the embargo remained in place, Cuba's long isolation from the international music business began to reverse itself.
