Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá

Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum, covers incredible history and tradition in its slender 150 pages. Vaughan captures everything the subtitle proclaims, but the heart comes directly from Aldama's own still-feisty voice.

(www.eastbayexpress.com)

Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá is a valuable addition to the growing literature on batá drumming, as a musical and historical phenomenon, [and] provides a snapshot of this period by a master drummer and preserves it for future generations.

(Latin American Music Review)

Vaughan and Aldama are well suited as coauthors: one is young and hungry; the other is mature and content to see the batá legacy passed on. Anyone taking the journey alongside them,whether just setting out on the drummer's path or seeking to reconnect with humanity and 'home,' will find this book to be an indispensable guide.

(New West Indian Guide)

This book is an important contribution to literature about the Afro-Cuban Lucumi tradition in its latest wave of expansion. As the bata player is a central figure in Afro-Cuban religious tradition, Vaughan and Aldama's book opens an ideal window from which to observe and learn about one of its most skilled proponents.

(Journal of American Folklore)

The chapter notes, list of references, and index are all quite thorough; the glossary is adequate. . . . Recommended.

(Choice)

[T]his book makes a compelling contribution to scholarship on bata as religious practice, folklore, and diasporic symbol, through the dialogue between a Cuban master drummer and his ethnographer-student.

(Journal of Folklore Research)