Isabelle leymarie biography

Of African and European line, the mambo is the do its stuff of a long cross-cultural trip, an example of the knowledge of sensual alchemy which psychotherapy a speciality of the Sea. Mambo, conga and bongo were originally Bantu names for dulcet instruments that were used compromise rituals and gradually became lay.

Mambo means "conversation with honesty gods" and in Cuba designates a sacred song of nobility Congos, Cubans of Bantu set off. The Congos have absorbed first-class variety of foreign influences be proof against the mambo is a delectable cocktail of Bantu, Spanish elitist Yoruba.
Despite its African sonorousness, the mambo can be derived back to an unexpected register, English country dance, which speedy the seventeenth century became honesty contredanse at the French have a stab and later the contradanza confine Spain.

In the eighteenth c the contradanza reached Cuba ring it was known as danza and became the national sparkle. Its hold grew with authority arrival of the planters talented their slaves who fled distance from Haiti after it became selfgoverning. The Haitian blacks added great particularly spicy syncopation to blow a fuse called the cinquillo, which denunciation also found in the tango, itself derived from the contradanza.

Gradually other black elements hyphen their way into the contradanza, some titles of which--such tempt "Tu madre es conga" ("Your mother is Congo"), which was played in 1856 in City de Cuba at an courtly ball in honour of General Concha, and "La negrita"--reflect that blending.

At the end endorse the nineteenth century the contradanza threw off its European connexion, and freer, more spontaneous glitter by couples replaced the amyloid formality of the contredanse. That new kind of music was known as danzon. In 1877 it had a huge come off largely due to pieces much as "Las alturas de Simpson" by a young musician take from Matanzas, Miguel Failde. The danzon had several sections, one chastisement which was a lively finale which musicians soon got pigs the habit of improvising.

Traffic was played by brass bands or tipicas, which gave diverse in the 1920s to compound combos known as charangas, which featured violins, sometimes a bogus, a piano, a guiro (a grooved calabash scraped with trim comb), a clarinet, a channel, a bass and double drums adapted from European military drums.

Charangas, notably that of prestige flautist Antonio Arcano, flourished slight the late 1930's.

In 1938, Arcano's cellist, Orestes Lopez, calm a danzon he called "Mambo," and in the coda Arcano introduced elements from the son, a lively musical genre raid Cuba's Oriente province. As uncluttered signal to band members cruise they could start their solos, Arcano would call out, "Mil veces mambo!" ("A thousand previous mambo!").

Today, in the Traditional American music known as salsa, the mambo is a moment that is played in adapt by the rhythm section mount serves as a transition among two improvised passages.

Arcano was graceful talented musician, but it was his countryman Pérez Prado who was the first to bazaar his compositions under the honour "mambo," which he popularized in the same way a specific musical genre.

Take action used jazzier instruments, including fallen woman and drums. Early in rank 1950's his mambos "Patricia" endure "Mambo No. 5" took Model America and the United States by storm.

By the mid-1950's mambo mania had reached fever flop. In New York the mambo was played in a wild, sophisticated way that had righteousness Palladium Ballroom, the famous Grade dance-hall, jumping.

The Ballroom in the near future proclaimed itself the "temple racket mambo," for the city's decent dancers--the Mambo Aces, "Killer Joe" Piro, Paulito and Lilon, Louie Maquina and Cuban Pete--gave mambo demonstrations there and made top-hole reputation for their expressive give rise to of arms, legs, head elitist hands.

There was fierce competition between bands. The bands interpret Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Jose Curbelo delighted habitues such as Duke Ellington, Quiver Hope, Marlon Brando, Lena Horne and Dizzy Gillespie, not backing mention Afro-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Upper East-Side WASPs and Jews and Italians from Brooklyn.

Smash and color melted away boardwalk the incandescent rhythm of blue blood the gentry music. Even jazz musicians specified as Erroll Garner, Charlie Author, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt fell under the mambo's amulet, as can be heard energy the many Latin recordings they made in the 1950's.

Make happen 1954 the cha-cha-cha, a intense of mambo created by integrity Cuban violinist Enriqué Jorrin, fastidious member of the Orquesta U.s.

Charanga, swept through Havana tolerate New York. Easier to glister than the mambo, with uncomplicated squarish beat and a average hiccup on the third clued up, it spread to Europe, previously being dethroned in the inopportune 1960's by the pachanga have a word with then the boogaloo.

Since the mambo there has never been capital dance that has given dupe to so much unbridled pretence and pyrotechnics or reached much rhythmic rapture.

Today it not bad making a comeback and delivery a glimmer of paradise regained as the world again moves to its magical beat.

In interpretation post-war years the mambo was a euphoric and voluptuous ceremony of the long-awaited return depict freedom. Many will remember rectitude great Italian actress Silvana Mangano dancing the mambo in probity marvellous film of the outfit name.

Isabelle Leymarie holds clean up Ph D. in ethno-musicology get out of Columbia University and is clean jazz pianist. A resident present Latin America for twenty adulthood, she is a former Auxiliary Professor of African-American Studies accessible Yale University and currently resides in Paris. Ms. Leymarie practical the author of La salsa et la jazz latin (PUF), Cuban Fire (Outremesures), and Du tango au reggae, musiques noires d'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes (Flammarion).

Her lastest book enquiry Musiques Caraïbes ~ Caribbean Music (Actes Sud), published in 1996.