National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

"Salsa is a formula. Merengue is a formula. Nueva Cancion is a formula," says Roy Brown, the feisty "Independentista" whose music has often been labeled nueva cancion. "They create these marshmallow fillings in people. You write a song like that, you get on the radio. We refuse to fit into that formula."

Brown's topics include Puerto Rican independence, struggles in South Africa and Palestine, love and relationships, the environment and settings for the great Spanish-language poets Lorca and Neruda and Puerto Rican poets such as Juan Antonio Corretjer. —Courtesy Calabash Music