About This Site
This website is the result of David Font-Navarrete’s and Martin Tsang’s efforts to create an open-access digital platform for collaborative research on the Lydia Cabrera and Josefina Tarafa archives in the Cuban Heritage Collection.
This project began with a collaborative effort to create the first complete archival-quality digitization of the collection, facilitated by David Font-Navarrete among several archival institutions: the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève, and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Font-Navarrete’s initial work with the Música de los cultos collection was supported by generous grants from PSC-CUNY, the CUNY Research Foundation, the Gerald E. and Corinne L Parsons Fund for Ethnography Award from American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, a Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grant from the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, the Society for American Music’s Wayne Shirley Fellowship, and a PSC-CUNY grant from the City University of New York Research Foundation.
The first iteration of the website was created by David Font-Navarrete and Martin Tsang with crucial early support from US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) Grants-in-Aid program from Arte Público Press and the University of Houston. The USLDH provided generous funding, and the team provided tremendous training and support in digital humanities and continue to promote and provide a platform for a wealth of US Latino/a-based research and scholarship. Thank you: Dr. Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Dr. Carolina Villarroel, Dr. Linda Garcia Merchant, Dr. Lorena Gauthereau, and the entire team USLDH team.
Special thanks to Isabel Castellanos, Dan Sheehy, D.A. Sonneborn, Verónica González, Alda Allina Migoni, Madeleine Leclair, Luis Bran and El Almacén, Juan Antonio Villanueva, and Amanda Moreno.