The pianist and composer Arturo O'Farrill knows better than almost anyone that more than 50 years of a trade embargo between the U.S. and Cuba hasn't fully prevented the exchange of jazz between the two countries. He's known it since he first visited Cuba in 2002."The first thing that I encountered was great 'goo-gobs' of young jazz musicians who worked really hard to master this craft that we thought was our own," O'Farrill says.Not that he's happy about the blockade. Years' worth of fruitful dialogue between musicians has been hampered, and as the leader of a big band known as the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, that's a problem he wants to address."I think that the more that the Cuban musicians and American musicians interact, the less of this unnatural balance will be in place," he says. "We need a new era — we desperately need a new era."O'Farrill was raised and lives in New York City, though his roots are certainly Cuban. His father was the late Chico O'Farrill, a composer/bandleader
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