A term applied to jazz in which elements of Latin American music, chiefly its dance rhythms, are particularly prominent. In striking contrast to most genres of jazz, in which triple subdivisions of the beat are prevalent, Latin jazz utilizes duple subdivisions. But unlike the rhythms of ragtime and jazz-rock, where the beat also undergoes duple subdivision, Latin-jazz rhythms are constructed from multiples of a basic durational unit, grouped unequally so that the accents fall irregularly in a one- or two-bar pattern. The habanera (or danza) rhythm (ex.1) is the simplest and most common of these groupings. The rhythmic ostinato may be played by members of a conventional rhythm section (piano, guitar, double bass and drums) or by Latin American instruments, particularly Afro-Cuban or Brazilian percussion such as the conga drum, bongos, cowbells and cuíca; the bass line often oscillates between the roots and fifths of chords.
Latin ostinatos were part of Jelly Roll Morton’s piano style. During the 1930s new Latin dances entered the mainstream of American popular music and occasionally found their way into jazz. In the 1940s Machito formed the Afro-Cubans, in which big-band instrumentation and arranging techniques were combined with Cuban percussion and musical structures; from 1948 to the 1960s he engaged famous jazzmen, including Charlie Parker, as soloists. In 1947 Dizzy Gillespie established his Afro-Cuban jazz orchestra, which included the conga drummer Chano Pozo, and in the same year Stan Kenton introduced the Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida and the bongo drummer Jack Costanzo into his jazz orchestra.
During the 1950s the mambo, the merengue and the cha cha cha were quickly incorporated into the repertories of big bands that played jazz for dancing. In small bop groups Latin tunes regularly supplemented the normal fare of swing standards, ballads and blues. The 1960s witnessed the emergence of strong Brazilian influences on jazz: the energetic samba and the quiet bossa nova reached a wide audience through the recordings of Stan Getz. In the late 1960s Airto Moreira initiated a second period of Brazilian influence by introducing Brazilian rhythms and dozens of native instruments into jazz-rock groups in the USA, most notably in those of Pat Metheny since the 1980s. The late 1980s and the 1990s witnessed a resurgence of Afro-Cuban jazz, particularly under Gillespie and Jerry Gonzalez.
See also Afro-Cuban jazz.
GroveJ
J.S. Roberts: The Latin Tinge: the Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York and Oxford, 1979)
J.S. Roberts: Latin Jazz: the First of the fusions, 1880s to Today (New York, 1999)
BARRY KERNFELD