Issac Delgado

Cuba's socialist system didn't undermine the artistic freedom of singer Issac Delgado with draconian repression or ideological censorship. It gradually got to him by bureaucratic nicks and cuts. Before defecting to the U.S. last year, Delgado was one of the island's top salsa stars, a celebrity who enjoyed relative prosperity in Havana and traveled freely throughout the world to perform and record.

Issac Delgado has seen the future of tropical music. And the future, he suggests, has a blinding sort of beauty to it. The Cuban singer ignited the capacity crowd at the Conga Room on Thursday with an eclectic style that goes beyond the genre's established definitions. To say that his music belongs to the controversial Cuban movement known as timba would be a narrow view.