Mambo & Cha-Cha-Cha

The 1940s and 50s transformed Cuban dance music across three centres at once. In Havana, Arsenio Rodríguez's conjunto and the Arcaño/López danzón-mambo...

The 1940s and 50s transformed Cuban dance music across three centres at once. In Havana, Arsenio Rodríguez's conjunto and the Arcaño/López danzón-mambo reorganised the rhythm section; in New York, Mario Bauzá and Machito's Afro-Cubans built a band where jazz soloing answered to clave — heard on "Tangá" (1943), often cited as an early defining Afro-Cuban jazz piece — and Chano Pozo carried the conga into Dizzy Gillespie's bebop, co-writing "Manteca" in 1947; in Mexico City and beyond, Dámaso Pérez Prado turned the mambo into an international big-band craze. The Palladium Ballroom on Broadway became the New York laboratory, where the "Mambo Kings" — Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez — ruled an integrated floor, and Enrique Jorrín's cha-cha-chá made the dancers' step audible in the music itself.

Years

1940-1958

In the app

Timeline