Tania León has been played on NTS in shows including Alicia Matthews, featured first on 31 March 2020. Songs played include La Conga De Maggie Magalita and Batéy.

Born in Havana, Cuba in 1943, Tania León fuses classical music with traditional Caribbean and African rhythms. She is skeptical of the "Afro-Cuban" label for her music, saying:

"What is my identity to other people? How do they see me? Do they see me? Do they hear me? … Every time I read a different article, I have a different category."

In 1994 Ms. León wrote the opera Scourge of Hyacinths based on the play by Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka. The two collaborated again in 2005 on the concert work Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known.

A song from the opera, "Oh Yemanja (Mother's Prayer)" was included on Dawn Upshaw's album of American music, The World So Wide. A collection of her orchestral music, Indigena was released in 1994, and her work is included on the collections Voces Americanas - Voices for Change, Visiones Panamericanas, Women Write Music, Sonoric Rituals, and others.

Her vocal works include collaborations with some of the most celebrated contemporary poets, including …or like a with John Ashbery, Love After Love with Derek Walcott, Rezos with Jamaica Kincaid and her newest work The Atwood Songs with Margaret Atwood.

She has also been recorded conducting the works of Luciano Berio and Henry Cowell, among others. She was a founding member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and is now the Tow Professor in Music at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.