Latin Jazz

From its inception, NEW ORLEANS JAZZ has what Jelly Roll Morton called “the Latin tinge.” The physical proximity between Havana and New Orleans facilitated a confluence of styles between ports. Whereas JAZZ in the United States arose from black blues and spiritual traditions, in Cuba, black musical traditions were preserved in the development of the syncretic religion known as Santeria. The hallmark of both styles is a call and response, improvisational, approach to the music that is highly charged and interactive. In Cuban form, this improvisational approach is known as a descarga, and was evident in the sones played by septetos in the teens and twenties of the present century.

It was inevitable, then, that these two sister musics developed casting more than a few admiring glances at each other while sharing the same mirror, and fighting over who would dance with whom… and what shall we dance to next?

Among the first to arrive from Cuba, on the heels of a RUMBA fever, and add their grain to this rich musical silt were Mario Bauzá, Frank Grillo “Machito”, Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill, and Israel Lopez “Cachao”. That was when GIANTS roamed the earth! They stepped back and forth between New York and JAZZ to Havana and Latin music with a facility and a fluency that is not strictly human. As musicians, composers, and arrangers, they contributed to the BIG BAND SWING of orchestras led by Benny Goodman, Chick Web, and Cab Calloway. At the same time they led their own orchestras and in their spare time invented the MAMBO!

In the JAZZ milieu they crossed paths with equally great innovators like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham, and Fats Navarro. A defining moment in the history of LATIN JAZZ occurred in 1947 when Luciano Pozo y González, the immortal “Chano” Pozo, joined Dizzy’s big band.

Just as JAZZ was created by blacks who were generations removed from slavery, in New York something qualitatively new was created by musicians generationally as well as culturally removed from the land of Jose Martí. It contained elements of Cuban music but with large dosages of JAZZ, SOUL, and even ROCK thrown in. The voices were different because the singers (as well as all the other members of the group) were just as likely to be of Puerto Rican as of Cuban ancestry.