The Jovellanos, a musical group from Matanzas, had already begun when I arrived. They played on the sweltering street, shaded beneath corrugated tin. The group’s four drummers could be heard blocks away, and soon the crowd grew to two hundred sweaty onlookers, mesmerized by the full-throttle beat as first the singers chanted Yoruba and other incantations, then danced a wild yet precise ritual whose increasing momentum summoned just the right frenzy. The first number was a soft yambú in which a couple acted out in slow motion a rooster and his hen circling and pecking, lunging and leaning. It was meant to be erotic and provocative, and it was both. Next came a faster rumba with rattling maracas that crescendoed as the dancers acted out a fight, then made up as the woman pushed off the man with a turn of the torso, coyly drawing him under her spell. The conga and the batá drums were the lead instruments, accompanied by rhythmic clatter from gourds, a cowbell, and well-defined non-Western free-form singing.