Mambo

What it means

The mambo is a Cuban dance and musical style that arose in the 1930s and 1940s and became internationally known in the 1950s. It combines Cuban dance music with elements of American big-band jazz.

Characteristic is a strongly syncopated rhythm in quadruple time, carried by dense percussion and interlocking figures from the horns. The music is fast, energetic, and marked by sharp accents. The basis is often a rhythmic pattern that runs over two bars and serves the whole ensemble as orientation.

From the mambo the cha-cha-cha developed, which is more moderate and even and therefore easier to dance. The mambo itself counts as a demanding dance with quick steps and pauses falling on particular beats.

In the notation

The mambo stands in quadruple time. In arrangements, the horn figures and the bass part are written out, often with many syncopations and accents. The percussion follows traditional patterns that are often not fully notated.

Musical use

The mambo shaped the dance music of the 1950s in Cuba, Mexico, and the United States and was played by large dance orchestras. It is an important forerunner of later Latin American styles and has left traces in jazz and popular music.

It grew out of the danzón: in the charanga Arcaño y sus Maravillas, the brothers Orestes and Israel “Cachao” López called its improvised final section mambo, and in 1938 Orestes López wrote the first piece titled “Mambo,” which took up syncopated motifs of the son. The pianist Dámaso Pérez Prado, who moved to Mexico in 1949, transferred the mambo to a line-up with several trumpets, saxophones, and percussion and made it popular in Mexico and the United States; typical of his style is the counterpoint between trumpets and saxophones. In New York the Palladium Ballroom, with bands such as those of Machito and Tito Puente, became the centre of the mambo craze. From the mid-1950s the cha-cha-cha displaced it; later its features were absorbed into salsa.

Performance practice

Bring out the syncopations sharply and keep the pulse unshakeable nonetheless. Play accents short and forceful. Watch the interplay with the percussion, which carries the rhythmic foundation. And listen to recordings, to develop a feel for how the different rhythmic layers work together.