Chico & Rita
is a lovely little tribute to an era in American culture during which a new
American genre was born and to a country and its people who helped foment that
genre. The genre I speak of is jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the
country is Cuba, which lent a great many musicians to the New York music scene,
bringing with them their conga drummers and smooth Latin beats to help
transmute a the burgeoning new form.
