Cuban drummer was ‘King of the Congas’

Tata Guines, 77, a conga drummer who helped popularize Afro-Cuban rhythms worldwide, died Monday outside Havana after being hospitalized for hypertension and kidney problems.

Known as the “King of the Congas” and “Golden Hands,” he was buried Tuesday in his hometown of Guines -- which he took as his stage name at the start of his career.

Born Federico Aristides Soto on June 30, 1930, Guines was best known for playing the conga, a tall, barrel-like drum central to rumba and Afro-Cuban music and culture.

He took the stage in Havana in the early 1940s with the Partagas Sextet and moved to the United States in 1957, where he performed with Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis.

Though he enjoyed success in the United States, Guines was upset by the racial discrimination he experienced and returned to Cuba after Fidel Castro’s rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Guines won a Latin Grammy in 2004 for “Lagrimas Negras,” or “Black Tears,” a collaboration with legendary exiled Cuban jazz pianist Bebo Valdes and Spanish singer Diego El Cigala. He also worked with the Rumba Cubana All-Stars on “La Rumba Soy Yo,” or “I Am the Rumba,” which won a Latin Grammy in 2001.

He received Cuba’s National Music Award in 2006.