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Afro-Cuban jazz giant Francisco Aguabella died of cancer Friday in his Los Angeles home. He was 84.

The master conguero and sacred batá drummer left Cuba in the '50s and went on to have a prolific career in America's burgeoning Latin jazz and salsa scenes. Aguabella was an in-demand and versatile percussionist who shared the stage and worked with a wide range of A-list artists, including Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Cachao, Cal Tjader, Carlos Santana and even The Doors. Born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1925, Aguabella was 12 when he began playing the batá, a sacred drum shaped like an hourglass used in the Santeria religion. He moved to Havana in 1947, where he eventually started performing at one the city's leading nightclubs. Around that time he met dancer/choreographer Katherine Dunham. Aguabella toured with her dance troupe in Italy and began work on the movie 'Mambo' before he eventually made his way to the U.S.

In 1992, Aguabella received a national heritage fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He also taught at UCLA. Aguabella was featured in the documentary 'Sworn to the Drum,' released in 1995; there is also a documentary about him in production by Orestes Matacena. He is survived by daughters Menina Givens, Martica Jenkins; sons Mario and Marco Aguabella; and seven grandchildren.

Singer/songwriter Jose Condé will be opening for legendary Cuban band Los Van Van for Central Park's SummerStage series on June 6. It's the first time Havana artists will share a bill with a first-generation Cuban-American from Miami. Los Van Van's blend of Afro-Cuban dance music, pop, and storytelling has been the soundtrack to Cubans' daily life since the 70s. Throughout the world they're renowned as the island nation's number one dance band. Meanwhile Condé's sonic cross-pollinations emit an overall pan-Latin vibe anchored in heavy grooves and varnished with a light-hearted pop veneer. SummerStage audiences will get a sneak peak of Condé 's newest material off of his upcoming self-titled album due out in spring 2011.

Son revivalists Sierra Maestra have been injecting new life into salsa's rootsy ancestor since the band's founding in 1976. Their long-awaited, new album 'Sonando Ya' (World Village/Harmonia Mundi) continues their tradition of whipping up a batch of the old with a distinctly fresh flavor.

While the band has undergone some lineup changes throughout the years -- notably missing from the equation are Juan de Marcos González, famed for his work with the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club and the Afro-Cuban All Stars, and lead singer José Antonio 'Maceo' Rodríguez, who passed away in 2005 -- 'Sonando Ya' draws strength and a sense of continuity from the band's five founding members. Amongst them is percussionist Luis Barzaga, now one of three lead singers. The inspiration, however, comes from a new crop of son songsmiths and interpreters, including tres player Emilio Ramos. The band's enthusiastic embrace of a contemporary range of material is one way these ambassadors of son are betting on the music's longevity.

iTunes Latino is currently featuring 'BabyRock Rock' from Nortec Collective's Clorofila as the Single Of The Week. The track is the first single off Jorge Verdin's ( a.k.a. Clorofila) solo debut release, 'Corridos Urbanos' (Nacional Records). As buzz surrounding the new album continues to build, Clorofila has scheduled a string of shows across Los Angeles next week. Verdin is known for both his musical and graphic design contributions to Nortec, the techno-norteño troupe that formed in Tijuana and straddles both sides of the border to construe its invigorating, musical pastiche. On the new album, Verdin collaborated with a variety of Tijuana-based tambora and norteño musicians on tuba, accordion, clarinet, and horn parts while taking a different approach to songwriting by eschewing synths in favor of bass and guitar-based compositions. View dates for his album release shows after the jump.

Samuel Torres' recently released 'Yaoundé,' named after the capital city of Cameroon, was inspired by the composer/percussionist's 2005 trip to Africa with guitarist Richard Bona. The experience got Torres thinking about the African roots of his own native rhythms and unleashed a torrent of creativity that resulted in his sophomore effort.

Originally from Bogotá, Colombia and based in New York City, Torres discovered a striking, shared musical ancestry between two continents that he wished to explore on record. There was the currulao from Colombia's pacific coast and the balafon music of Cameroon, for instance, to his ear undeniable sonic cousins. With an ensemble comprised of some of jazz and Latin jazz's brightest talents -- including woodwind artists Anat Cohen and Joel Frahm, trumpeter Michael Rodriguez, pianist Manuel Valera, Grammy award-winning bassist John Benitez, timbalero Ralph Irizarry, drummer Ernesto Simpson, vocalist Sofía Rei Koutsovitis, and tiple (12-string Colombian guitar) player Andrés García -- Torres took his compositions to the next level.

'Yaoundé' reveals his willingness to take risks and build cultural bridges with thirteen tracks that draw from Colombian folk traditions and traces them to African sonorities through a funk/jazz filter. Torres made his debut as a leader in 2006 with the release of 'Skin Tones,' an album that quickly solidified his reputation as a rising star vying for a place in the pantheon of some of the most visionary Latin jazz percussionists of his generation. A former member of Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval's band, Torres' life story was recently featured in a book titled, 'Chicken Soup For The Soul: Thanks Mom,' in which he recounts how being raised by a working, single mom gave him the perseverance to succeed as a musician.

Colombian Radio Stations

African Radio Stations

Latin Jazz Radio Stations

Los Angeles-based public radio station KCRW and Latin-Grammy winning multiculti troupe Ozomatli have done much to shape Los Angeles' sonic milieu. The latter even had a day designated in their honor when the City of Los Angeles officially declared April 23, 2010 as 'Ozomatli Day' to celebrate and recognize the band's fifteenth anniversary. Both based in L.A., Ozomatli and KCRW's destinies have occasionally intertwined. The tastemaker station played a pivotal role in the dissemination of Ozomatli as the first radio station to play the band's music; it also hosted Ozomatli's live performance debut in 1997.

On their latest meeting of the minds, the 'Ozomatli vs KCRW Soundclash Remix Project,' five KCRW DJs -- music director and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic Jason Bentley, Anne Litt, Anthony Valadez, Tom Schnabel and Aaron Byrd -- remix songs from the Latin ensemble's recently released, fifth studio album 'Fire Away' (Mercer Street / Downtown Records). This is the second installment of the Soundclash series, where KCRW DJs take a turn remixing a favorite, socially conscious artist. 'Femi Kuti vs KCRW' was released in 2009. Check out Ozomatli's upcoming tour dates after the jump.

Cuban troubadours Gema y Pavel have embarked on a mini-tour of Spain and two dates in Geneva in celebration of their 20-year musical partnership; in June they will perform at The Jazz Gallery in New York City as part of the NYC Jazz Festival. Gema Corredera and Pavel Urkiza began their creative collaboration in 1990 at an open-mic night in the Havana home of legendary composer Marta Valdés. Their unique sound soon caught on and was dubbed neo-filin because of the way the duo melded the emotion of Cuba's post-bolero filin (feeling) movement of the 40s and 50s with the poetry and provocative consciousness of the nueva trova aesthetic that dominated Cuba's popular music landscape between the 60s and 80s.

In 1993 Gema y Pavel defected to Madrid, where they recorded their first album, 'Trampas del Tiempo,' released on Spain's Nubenegra label. The full-length was followed by 'Cosa de Broma' (1996), 'Síntomas de Fe' (1999), and 'Art Bembé' (2003). In recent years, Gema y Pavel's sound has been referred to as filin progresivo, a label which seems to capture their continued willingness to absorb the myriad influences that have surrounded them and experiment with a palette of distinct genres, including flamenco, East Indian, jazz, bossa nova and African music. Their insatiable curiosity was fed all the more while living in Madrid's largely immigrant neighborhood Lavapiés. On their recent album, 'Ofrenda a Borinquen,' independently released on their own label Imolé Records, Gema y Pavel play tribute to the popular songbook of Puerto Rico. Check out their tour dates after the jump.