CHA-CHA-CHÁ: A Dance and An Era (English book)

Cha-Cha-Chá: A Dance and an Era is the debut publication from Gladys Palmera, the most important collection of Cuban and Afro-Latin recordings in the world.

A hard-cover, 416-page collectors’ item, the book includes full-color images of 800 rare record covers, posters and photographs from the mid-twentieth century golden age of Latin music, and essays about the origins and transcendent impact of the chachachá.

Why a book about the chachachá now? The answer lies with Alejandra Fierro, philanthropist and lover of popular Latinx culture who is the iconic and mysterious figure behind Gladys Palmera – the collection and an award-winning radio station and podcast platform that for two decades has been an authoritative voice for Ibero-American music.

“Chachachá represents everything that fascinates me about music,” Alejandra says. “Mystery, sensuality, seduction, the bright colors of the Caribbean, an invitation to dance without inhibitions, the beauty of kitsch. More than a sound, the chachachá is a way of life. It’s rabidly modern, even though it was created more than a half century ago. It’s esthetic never goes out of style, like anything that’s classic. The rhythm of chachachá remains as addictive as the first time I heard it.”

The infinite parties of the 1950s in the Prado and Neptuno dance hall located inside Havana’s Miami restaurant, the record covers featuring sensuous women poised to laugh at the censorship of the time, the mythic orchestras that popularized the genre, the tropical colorscapes, the iconography for records and posters designed by Hollywood artists and iconic illustrators like Mad Magazine’s Jack Davis…

…This is a book for anyone who has ever felt that unstoppable impulse to move their hips and feet whenever a tropical rhythm starts to play.

The pages Cha-Cha-Chá: A Dance and an Era feature QR codes to open essential playlist compilations of the best of chachachá. The book’s images and text immerse you in the world of chachachá, inviting you to travel through a legendary era that resounds in the music of contemporary artists, and whose past incites dialogue about current issues such as gender equality and the global explosion of Latin sounds.