A jazz style. It was created from a fusion of bop with traditional Cuban elements, that arose in the 1940s, primarily in the work of Dizzy Gillespie; it is distinguished from the more general Latin jazz by the specific influence of Cuban dance, folk and popular idioms. Although a Latin-American or Caribbean influence (Jelly Roll Morton called it the ‘Latin tinge’) is discernible in jazz from the late 19th century, the earliest use of Cuban elements is traceable only to Alberto Socarras and Mario Bauzá in the late 1930s. Afro-Cuban jazz became a clearly defined style and acquired an international following only when Gillespie, who had been influenced by Bauzá, began to collaborate with the outstanding Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo. For Gillespie, Bauzá, and others, the main impulse for the Afro-Cuban movements came from their feeling that American jazz of the 1930s and 1940s, being essentially monorhythmic, needed the kind of enrichment that an infusion of Afro-Cuban polyrhythms would provide.
Gillespie's big band made several notable recordings in the late 1940s, including Pozo's compositions Manteca (1947, Vic.), Afro-Cuban Suite (on the album of the same name, 1948, Swing), and Guarachi guaro (1948, Vic.), and George Russell's Cubana be/Cubana bop (1947, Vic.); these pieces, which feature Pozo's conga drumming, were the first to integrate authentic Afro-Cuban polyrhythmic concepts with the bop idiom. Soon other big bands began to make recordings in the Afro-Cuban style; Stan Kenton's Machito (1947, Cap.), Peanut Vendor (1947, Cap.), Cuban Episode (1950, Cap.), and Twenty Three Degrees North, Eighty Two Degrees West (1952, Cap), and Machito's Cubop City (1948, Roost), Afro Cuban Jazz Suite (1950, Clef), Kenya (1957, Roul.), and ‘Afro-jazziac’ (on the album With Flute to Boot, 1958, Roul.) are noteworthy examples. Smaller groups also contributed significantly to the new genre, in particular those led by Tadd Dameron (Jahbero, 1948), Charlie Parker (My Little Suede Shoes, 1951, Mer./Clef) and Bud Powell (Un poco loco, 1951, BN).
Gillespie's band continued to perform Afro-Cuban jazz throughout the 1950s, and recorded such titles as ‘Manteca Suite’ (on the album Afro, 1954, Norg.) and Gillespiana (1960, Verve). A number of prominent Cuban percussionists were active during the same period; among these were Candido Camero, Armando Peraza and Mongo Santamaria, who recorded the albums Yambu (1958, Fan.) and Mongo (1959, Fan.) with his own band.
While the impact of Afro-Cuban jazz began to wane in jazz circles by the end of the 1950s, Cuban and other Caribbean-oriented musicians, coming under the influence of modern jazz, maintained the fusion of the two genres, but with a slight shift of emphasis towards the Cuban side of the equation. Ray Barretto, Eddie Palmieri, Bobby Paunetto and Santamaria helped further to ‘latinize’ Afro-Cuban jazz and thereby also to broaden its scope and definition.
F. Ortiz: La africanía de la música folklórica de Cuba (Havana, 1950) [incl. transcrs.]
M.W. Stearns: The Story of Jazz (New York, 1956, rev. and enlarged 2/1958, enlarged 1970)
J.S. Roberts: Black Music of Two Worlds (New York, Washington, and London, 1972), chap.8
J.S. Roberts: The Latin Tinge: the Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York, and Oxford, 1979)
GUNTHER SCHULLER