1947-1949Cuba

Mambo

Also known as Mambo cubano

A Cuba-rooted dance genre that grew out of danzón, then burst into international popularity through Pérez Prado’s brassy, crowd-moving orchestral sound.

Origins and context

Documented as emerging from Cuban danzón and Afro-Cuban musical practice, with later development and popularization through Cuban and transnational dance-music scenes.

Cuba

The sound

Instrument palette

The voices and tools most associated with this sound.

Brass
Reeds
Piano
Bass
Congas
Bongos
Timbales

History

Mambo’s roots are usually traced to Cuban danzón in the work of Orestes López and his brother Israel “Cachao” López, who expanded the final section of the dance and named it mambo. Library of Congress materials and related scholarship place that early development in Cuba, while also noting the word’s Afro-Cuban religious associations and the genre’s later blending with jazz and big-band sonorities. (lcweb2.loc.gov) The style then found its widest audience in the hands of Dámaso Pérez Prado, who took the idea into a louder, brass-forward direction and helped turn it into an international craze in the late 1940s and 1950s. Library of Congress sources and Pérez Prado’s artist pages also connect the genre’s spread to Mexico City and then to dance halls in the United States, especially New York, where mambo became a major popular dance music of the era. (lcweb2.loc.gov)