Watch these two videos of the making of Chucho Valdes's latest album 'Chucho's Steps' which has just won a Grammy. They include interview with Chucho and other musicians plus performances.

Cuban pianist and composer Chucho Valdes won his fourth Grammy award to the Best Latin Jazz Album on the 53 annual awards ceremony of the American Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Valdes won the award for his album Chucho's steps recorded with his new band Mensajeros Afrocubanos. The band is made up of his former quartet plus wind instruments and folkloric percussion.

The importance of the African legacy for Latin American and Caribbean cultures was acknowledged during a panel held at the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress, as part of the agenda of the 20th edition of Havana's International Book Fair.

The Cuban rumba and dance troupe Los Muñequitos de Matanzas hasn't performed in New York in nearly a decade. Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, which mixes Afro-Caribbean dance and classical European ballet and was founded in 1959, has never been to the United States. Neither have the socially conscious photographers Adonis Flores and Cirenaica Moreira.

Sustainable peasant agriculture, which first arose in Cuba in response to the economic crisis in the early 1990s, has been going from strength to strength. A recent study, carried out jointly by ANAP (the Cuban National Association of Small Farmers) and La Via Campesina, shows that the involvement of the peasant farmers themselves, that results from the Campesino-to-Campesino social process methodology, is a key element in accounting for this success.

The French beverage and liquor company Pernod Ricard expressed satisfaction last week at a Spanish court ruling in its favour on its rights to the Havana Club trademark.

Ian FitzSimons, legal director for Pernod Ricard, said in a press release that the Spanish Supreme Court decision to reject Bacardiâ�Ös challenge against Pernod's and Cuba's ownership of Havana Club confirmed the transparency of the French company's actions.

British musician Jimmy Page, former guitarist for the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, made a surprise visit of several days to Cuba, it was confirmed here Tuesday.

Prensa Latina learned that the 67-year-old rocker left Cuba on Monday after a visit that included tours of historic sites, and purchases of souvenirs such as the famous photograph of Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda and albums by local artists.

Rene Francisco has just received the 2010 Visual Arts National Award, the highest distinction that is granted in Cuba within that artistic field.

The Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at University College London, in association with the Escuela International de Cine y Television in Cuba and Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, is pleased to offer an intensive, hands-on Documentary Summer School in Cuba next summer, running from Monday 27 June until Friday 22 July 2011. The workshop will be held at the world-famous Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television which is situated just 30 miles outside Havana in San Antonio de los Baños. Founded in 1986 by Gabriel García Marquez, the International Film and Television School — known as a 'Vatican for Film-Makers' — is now directed by Tanya Valette, one of the first generation of graduates from the school in 1990.

The course will be taught by one of the School's regular professors, Enrique Colina, who has been making innovative documentaries and films for over twenty years, gaining many international awards for his work. He is also well known in Cuba as the host of an enormously popular TV show about cinema of the 1970s and 1980s called "24 x Segundo" (24 Times a Second). One of his recent films, Entre ciclones (Between Cyclones, 2003), was shown to great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival. Professor Stephen Hart of the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at UCL, is the co-ordinator and co-instructor of the course and he will be travelling with the group from London to the Film School.

Santiago de Cuba is preparing to celebrate a great party dedicated to music and dance lovers in May 2011, during the 15th Cubadisco International Fair, a tribute to Son and to this city.

The 2011 International Book Fair in Cuba will feature a new assortment of the best history and literature of the Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 200 years, the ALBA Bicentennial Collection.

Watch this great video about the music of the Creole Choir of Cuba and the making of their recent album Tande-La.

One of the most enjoyable – and surprising- hits of the last couple of years in the UK was the success of this phenomenal choir, whose repertoire consists of traditional Haitian songs sung in a style suggesting that they hail from the island of Haiti itself. And yet they are all Cuban, from the city of Camaguey, which does not even boast a ‘tumba francesa', the old cultural centres for the Haitian descendents which still survive in Santiago and Guantanamo.
Indeed, much of the music on this recently released album does not sound ‘typically Cuban' at all- it is often intense and full of passion, with soulful solo singing set against a pulsating and rhythmic chorus and typical Haitian drums.

When Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo run onto the stage of the O2 arena in June next year, the Royal Ballet's greatest stars will be following in the footsteps of Gary Barlow, Roger Federer and, last week, Arcade Fire's Régine Chassagne. Dancing Romeo and Juliet, they will be greeted by more than 13,000 fans and will be playing their part in a ballet boom that looks set to sweep Britain in 2011.

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