Jazz Meets Cuba

Mario Bauzá knew both worlds from the inside. With Machito, Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie, he helped turn decades of exchange into Afro-Cuban jazz.

Jazz and Cuban music had been in conversation for decades. Mario Bauzá helped turn that exchange into a working system. After learning swing from inside Chick Webb and Cab Calloway’s orchestras, he became musical director of Machito and His Afro-Cubans, where jazz improvisation sat over a Cuban rhythm section without losing clave. Tito Puente passed through the band, ‘Tanga’ made the idea audible in 1943, and in 1947 Bauzá introduced Chano Pozo to Dizzy Gillespie. Bauzá did not make those musicians. He connected people who each brought their own knowledge, and the music they built together became Afro-Cuban jazz.

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