sexual lyrics and unabashed stage and street presence. As a result of NG La Banda's success, many more timba bands sprung up throughout the 1990s. "The intellectuals say that timba is crap," Cortés says."But this is a racist concept. Cuban popular music has always been the music of the people, of the poor barrios, where there are very few whites. This is the music that comes from below, that makes people want to dance. But just because people dance to it doesn't mean it's not as serious as any other serious music. Timba is not your father's, or your grandfather's, Cuban music; not the sweet traditional sounds of the international hit Buena Vista Social Club. Timba is the sound of Cuba now, a rhythmically dense, relentlessly energetic music played by highly skilled musicians for a demanding dance-floor audience, with lyrics that draw from and become part of the language of the streets." As a music style, timba crystallized in the late 1980s largely thanks to the experimentations of NG La Banda, a band led by black flute player and composer José Luís Cortés, who made his music into the voice of the marginal black barrios of the capital city . . . in the early 1990s the novel style moved to the centre of the popular musical scene of Havana. Thanks to the fertile ground provided by the boom of international tourism, timba became the mainstay of night entertainment and the sound-track of the new tourist dolce vita—Perna (2005) Discography No te compliques (1988); En la calle (1990) No se puede tapar el sol con un dedo (1990) En la calle otra vez (1991) En cuerpo y el alma (1991) (live) Échale limón [Japanese version] (1992) Échale limón [Cuban version] (1993) Para Curaçao (1993) La que manda (1994) La bruja (1994) En directo desde el patio de mi casa (1995) De allá pa' acá (1996) La cachimba (1996) Veneno (1998) Baila conmigo (2000) Mis 22 años (2013) References External Links Cuban musical groups