With a stellar jazz ensemble (featuring guest Wynton Marsalis) and four percussionists playing batá and other traditional hand drums, pianist Elio Villafranca offers an epic inspired by the sounds not only of his native Cuba, but also Haiti, Jamaica, and other island nations bearing deep traces of Congolese heritage. Through full-length pieces with dense horn arrangements and fiery solos, as well as shorter interludes, narration, and field recordings, Villafranca reframes the story of jazz and its Afro-Latin roots, with incandescent results.