Descarga (Cuban jam session)

The descarga is less a genre than a way of playing — the Cuban jam session set to tape: a stripped, open vamp over which musicians improvise at length,...

The descarga is less a genre than a way of playing — the Cuban jam session set to tape: a stripped, open vamp over which musicians improvise at length, trading solos the way a jazz combo does. Musicians had long jammed over Cuban vamps, but the bassist Cachao gave the idea its decisive recorded form in his 1957 sessions, inspired in part by Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic model — proof that Havana and New York were borrowing formats from each other even as they kept different rhythmic grammars. It is the montuno taken to its logical extreme: take the part where everyone solos and make that the whole piece. The descarga's loose, conversational energy fed straight into salsa and Latin jazz.

Era

Mambo & Cha-Cha-Cha

Traits

Improvised jam sessions in a jazz manner but with Cuban popular-music vocabulary. Cachao pioneered the recorded form (1957); a core practice for Palmieri, Barretto, and the Fania All-Stars.