Mawkish?

I used to be ashamed for liking Lamento cubano, but I'm less embarrassed now, especially in the jazz version, though I prefer the guajira.  

Jazz makes sentiment cool, acceptable.  Jazz originated in African-Americans communities, as new improvised, underground movement that developed in part in response to and in spite of systemic racism and social oppression.  But jazz musicians also played for diverse audiences including those paying white patrons. In an extraordinary twist it emerged from an oppressed people but was also sold to the system and people who oppressed and segregated them. 

A lot of Cuban or Caribbean folk songs are, I guess, sentimental, about the humble life, the farmer who is often walking along a cart track or going to market.  They are humble sentiments, but these, are after all, what we all feel: love and loss, frustration, happiness, disappointment joy and sadness. Besides which, in Lamento Borincano (singer, the puertorriqueño Daniel Santos) there is a wider, possibly political comment about the state of the island.  The combination of the emotional and the analytical or political is enriching, I find.