Timbal, bongó and tumbadora. Danzón, son, rumba / Mambo Era New York City

Cuba is a major music hub, with many musical styles that would become important in the US. Many of these arise from the particular kinds of Afro-Cuban musical forms that emerged in this country, which was demographically important in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The legal importation of slaves in Cuba did not end until 1867, and slavery as an institution continued on the island until 1886.  African cultural forms continue to be central, in one form or another, to Cuban culture and music.

We've already talked about briefly batá drums and ritual orisha drumming, but Cuban non-religious music is also permeated by neo-African forms, some more and some less creolized. These too have become part of modern popular music and have influenced salsa and mambo in the US. These musics are undergirded by the rhythmic base of three different instruments — conga, bongó, and timbales— each coming from a different Cuban musical tradition.

For non-religious drumming, the drum-dance-song tradition called rumba, played on conga drums, remains popular both in Cuban and in New York. There are three kinds, the archaic style called yambú (sometimes played on wooden boxes), the male solo dance called columbia (which overlaps in some of its dance moves with abakuá), and the couple dance called guaguancó, in which the man tries to "vaccinate" the woman.

The distinctive drum pattern (and clave, which is slightly different from son) of guaguancó shows up in lots of music, including the most modern salsa. Indeed, rumba is one important root for the musics that in New York would come to be called mambo and salsa.

The other is a more creolized from called son. It's all based on clave - a rhythm played by two little sticks that are also called clave. Sometimes it's not played at all but is implicit in the musicians' minds. Son clave is tresillo followed by two beats (3-2 clave) or preceded by them (2-3).
"Échale salsita," an old school son music by the legendary Septeto Nacional, founded in 1929 by Ignacio Piñeiro. Notice the instruments - trumpet, clave, maracas, güiro, guitar, tres, bass, and bongó/campana (bell).  Back in the 1920s, the real old school sextetos used to have a marímbula or even a botija instead of a bass. Notice that bongó drums are different from the conga drums traditionally used in rumba.

Rumba and son were brought together by the amazing son innovator Arsenio Rodríguez's in the late 1930's, making a more modern, more percussive, more urban modern son, as in his "Fuego en el 23"

or in the way he built layered hornlines that did as much rhythmic work as harmony and melody, in final sections he called diablos.

Son was brought to the US by the Cuban bandleader Don Azpiazú, whose version of the classic son, "El Manicero" (The Peanut Vendor), written by Moisés Simón later covered by Stan Kenton and about 73,000 other people) premiered on Broadway in 1930.

An older form is danzón, which is basically salon music supplemented by timbales and a güiro scraper. "Isora," a gorgeous danzón composed in 1939 by the sister of bandleader and bassist Israel "Cachao" López.  Listen for the different sections, marked by transitions with unison hits by all the percussion (plus some sick flutery by the Puerto Rican musician Néstor Torres). The intro to the last section (called the mambo) is marked by the timbales.

A Cachao mambo that he peeled off from the danzón - "Chanchullo" from 1939. NY Puerto Rican mambo king Tito Puente would adapt the song as "Oye Como va," which the Chicano rocker Carlos Santana would cover in the 1960s.

This would become the U.S. branch of mambo. Another would arrive in Mexico, in a more pop-friendly version, with the Cuban musician Dámaso Pérez Prado in the 1950s.

It was between the three genres, danzón, son, and rumba, that the mambo rhythm section, featuring timbales, bongó and bell, and congas, would emerge.

So: mambo developed from injecting rumba and danzón into son.  Arsenio Rodriguez brought the conga and his band popularized an expanded instrumentation including three trumpets and a piano as well. The timbales and the unison breaks of danzón would also be incorporated the mambo, which Cachao peeled off from the danzón to make it its own montuno-like jam session. Mambo would morph into both pop versions (Pérez Prado in Mexico, some of what pop bandleaders like Cugat did in the US), and grittier and more experimental versions in New York (Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, and Machito and his Afro-Cubans).

Meanwhile, in New York...

... in the 1930s, there were tons of Puerto Rican and Cuban musicians playing old school "típico" style uptown for a Latino audience, including Cuban Alberto Socarrás, Puerto Rican Noro Morales, Cuban Alberto Iznaga, Puerto Rican Augusto Coen, Puerto Rican Manuel "El Canario" Jiménez, the Puerto Rican Cuarteto Victoria of Rafael Hernández, and the Cuban former singer with Don Azpiazú Antonio Machín's Cuarteto Machín. These might change formats for diferent audiences. The Cuban son outfit Cuarteto Caney played both in a "típico" format for uptown audiences and in a "continental" format for downtown gigs. And we've already seen how Don Azpiazú's band (fronted by singer Antonio Machín) had already performed the seminal Cuban hit "El Manisero" (The Peanut Vendor) on Broadway in pretty much the same way as they'd played it in Cuba, to great popular acclaim.

Mario Bauzá learned jazz arrangement and harmonies during his work with the African-American swing musicians Cab Calloway and Chick Webb. In the 1940's he took those lessons to Machito and the Afro-Cubans. Mario Bauzá is the second trumpeter from the left.

More Machito: "Carambola"

Now in the 1970s, an elderly Machito and Graciela (his sister and  vocalist with the Afro-Cubans), with Bauzá grooving out behind, perform the santería-themed song "Changó 'tá vení."

The Machito group was popular among white audiences during the mambo craze of the 1950's, as in this redo of the Chick Webb swing tune "Stompin' at the Savoy" as "Mambo a la Savoy." They also had a fair number of sings that might be described as "exotic," like "Desert Dance / Cleopatra Rumba."

Much of Bauzá's story can be found in the PBS series Latin Music USA, starting at 4:22.

 

See also the sections on Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo (15:40), mambo (21:50), the NY Puerto Ricans Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez (21:50), and the Palladium, 26:44. For more on Jews and Latin music, there's a great interview with Jewish mambonik turned salsero Larry Harlow.

What characterizes mambo musically is:

• Full percussion - Timbales, Congas, and Bongo/Cowbell
• Piano and bass
• Large horn section, playing in percussive blocks, layered parts, or together in fast snaky melodies
• In the case of Pérez Prado - "the grunt"