Musical Legacies of the African Diaspora

What happens to musical traditions as they travel through history? Why do some remain rooted in sacred communities while others are transformed into global sounds? Cuba and Brazil offer two compelling answers. Together, they have become  two of the most extraordinary centers of African diasporic musical creativity, yet their histories reveal different pathways through which music preserves memory, expresses resistance, and continually reinvents cultural traditions.

Through an engaging exchange of ideas and carefully curated listening examples, this conversation invites audiences to explore the enduring cultural legacies of the African diaspora beyond familiar narratives.

Drawing on their recent books, Eva Silot Bravo, author of Cuban Fusion: The Transnational Cuban Alternative Music Scene, and Umi Vaughan, co-author of Silencing the Drum: Religious Racism and Afro-Brazilian Sacred Music, examine complementary trajectories of African diasporic musical cultures. Vaughan explores the resilience of Afro-Brazilian sacred music communities as they confront religious intolerance and preserve traditions deeply rooted in place. Silot Bravo traces the global journeys of Cuban musicians whose transnational collaborations have transformed Afro-Cuban musical legacies into new sounds across continents. Together, they reveal how music serves as both a repository of cultural memory and a catalyst for creative reinvention, opening a lively conversation about identity, migration, spirituality, resistance, and the evolving cultural legacies of the African diaspora.

Eva Silot Bravo is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and former Cuban diplomat. Her research explores transnational Cuban music production and the cultural legacies of the African diaspora. Based on interviews and participatory observations with Cuban diasporic musicians across world cities, Cuban Fusion documents the emergence of a global musical movement, revealing how Cuban artists are reimagining their rich heritage through a contemporary fusion music language with jazz, funk, R&B, rock, Afro-diasporic traditions, and other genres. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, Spanish and Literatures from the University of Miami and has published Cuban Fusion: The Transnational Cuban Alternative Music Scene (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

Umi Vaughan is an artist-scholar who reimagines life and celebrates culture through a Black diasporic lens using photo-based visual art, music and dance performance, ethnographic research, and published writing full of empathy and funk as his tools. His training includes a B.A. in Fine Art and Spanish Language from Morehouse College, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan, and music making in communities across the African diaspora, especially the Bay Area, Peru, Colombia, Cuba, and Brazil. He is the co-author of Silencing the Drum: Religious Racism and Afro-Brazilian Sacred Music, author of Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum and Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba.