Afro-Cuban jazz / Cubop (Latin jazz)

Afro-Cuban jazz — Cubop, in its bebop-era heyday — is jazz harmony and improvisation built over a clave-governed Cuban rhythm section, so the soloist...

Afro-Cuban jazz — Cubop, in its bebop-era heyday — is jazz harmony and improvisation built over a clave-governed Cuban rhythm section, so the soloist answers to the drum rather than decorating it. Its architecture was laid in New York by Mario Bauzá and Machito and his Afro-Cubans, whose 1943 "Tangá" is often cited as an early defining statement of the style. Four years later Dizzy Gillespie and the Havana conguero Chano Pozo made it visible to the whole jazz world with "Manteca." This was no longer jazz with bongos: it was a genuine negotiation between two rhythmic grammars, and it kept renewing itself, from the Bay Area to Havana's Irakere.

Era

Mambo & Cha-Cha-Cha

Traits

Jazz harmony and arranging with jazz soloists over an authentic Afro-Cuban rhythm section. Bauzá's 'Tangá' (1943) considered the first true tune; Machito named 'Cubop' (1948); Gillespie + Chano Pozo's 'Manteca' (1947) the parallel landmark.