Arena — Season 1, Episode 288: Caribbean Nights: Danzon
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
In an old church in Havana, the Urfe brothers play Danzones, the first popular Cuban music to emerge from the blend of African and European traditions at the turn of the century. The dance it inspired was considered shocking by colonial Cuban society.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.