Those gathered in Santa Amalia were black Cubans, and the music was American swing and bebop. “We live for jazz,” explained Roberto Cabrera, another eager raconteur who worked as a tennis instructor when he was not dancing. “We followed it [in the ’50s] from bar to bodega to radio station. When the Club Cubano de Jazz met at Tropicana, you would find us there en masse, every Sunday afternoon, in Arcos de Cristal.”
