Tata Güines (born as Federico Aristides Soto y Alejoà) (June 30, 1930 - February 4, 2008) was a Cuban percussionist on the conga and composer. He was important in the first generation of Afro-Cuban jazz.
Güines was born in Güines, a poor city east of Havana in the province of Matanzas in Cuba. He made his first drums of milk packs. He became famous by playing the conga, a narrow drum, brought to Cuba by African slaves from the Congo area. In the fifties he worked with Cuban top musicians such as Arsenio Rodriguez, Chano Pozo, Bebo Valdés and Israel Lopez. In the late 1950s, he formed a band with pianist Frank Emilio Flynn, called Quinteto Instrumental de Musica Moderna, later known as Los Amigos.
Güines moved to New York City in 1957, and played there with great jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson, and Miles Davis at Birdland. As a percussionist he performed with Josephine Baker and Frank Sinatra. He returned to Cuba in 1959 after Fidel Castro came to power. He helped to fund the Cuban Revolution of his merits as a musician.
For some time instrumentalists were not popular with the Cuban audience, and his popularity fell off. He became popular in 1979 with his work in the Estrellas de Areito sessions, recordings for Egrem, the Cuban state-record company, which brought back the old descarga style. In the nineties he was considered an old master and regularly attended. He made recordings with young congas player Anga Diaz, on the record "Pasaporte" (1995), who won the award for the Egrem album of the year, the equivalent of a Grammy Award in Cuba. And in 2004 he played the conga on the Latin Grammy-winning "Lagrimas Negras" ("Black Tears") with pianist Bebo Valdés and Spanish Flamenco singer Diego El Cigala. He worked with other young groups and recorded "Chamalongo" with Canadian saxophonist Jane Bunnett, and played the title track of Bebo Valdés and Diego El Cigala's popular album, Lágrimas Negras, 2003.
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