“Drums Across the Sea is a work-in-progress featuring Harry Belafonte as host-narrator. In a unique collaboration, filmmakers Les Blank, Howard Dratch and Gene Rosow embark on an ambitious cinematic voyage. The challenge: to trace the roots of some of the most exciting Latin music in America today, its origins in Africa and Spain, through its development in Cuba, and its influence on jazz, salsa, and other Latin-accented rhythms around the world. Anchored to a drum beat brought by African slaves, Afro-Cuban music burst into this country in the forties and fifties with the ‘mambo craze,' the rumba, and the cha-cha-cha, and is now undergoing an exploding renaissance of popularity as ‘salsa' in clubs, dance halls and recording studios in Europe and America. On view in the film are emerging superstar Ruben Blades; Cuba's most popular band, Los Van Van; the celebrated jazz ensemble Irakere; a Cuban-Chinese, all-woman band, Anacaona; master of the popular form of Cuban music known as ‘son,' Isaac Oveido and family; Estrellas Cubanas; rumba dances in the streets of Havana and New York; wild scenes from Carnaval in Santiago de Cuba; the wisdom of Dizzy Gillespie, and the guiding presence of Harry Belafonte.” Tom Luddy.
Drums Across the Sea has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. (Note: Drums Across the Sea will also be presented November 2 at the S.F. Cinematheque.)