On a typical Saturday afternoon in the Havana courtyard of El Palenque, drummers coax conga rumba rhythms into the air above the crowd. A thousand miles away, Sundays in Central Park also mean rumba.
Tata Guines, 77, a conga drummer who helped popularize Afro-Cuban rhythms worldwide, died Monday outside Havana after being hospitalized for hypertension and kidney problems. Known as the “King of the ...