Afro-Cuban Jazz Guide: A Brief History of Afro-Cuban Jazz

Afro-Cuban jazz is a style of Latin jazz music that evolved in the New York City jazz scene in the early 1940s. It features two core elements as its basis:

• Sophisticated jazz harmonies: Such harmonies are idiomatic to all styles of jazz—from the hot jazz of New Orleans musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, to the big band orchestras of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, to the New York City bebop scene led by saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
• Clave-based rhythms: The traditional clave is a syncopated two-measure rhythmic pattern that originated in Africa and made its way into Afro-Caribbean culture. Via tunes like Mario Bauzá 1943 "Tanga"—considered the first song to meld Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz—Afro-Cuban rhythms entered the New York music scene, and before long, Latin percussion instruments came along, too.

Afro-Cuban jazz originated in the 1940s when Black jazz musicians in New York City began to draw on the rhythmic styles of Cuban musicians who'd made their way into the city's music scene.

• Broad Latin influence: Latin influence was already prevalent in the form of certain Latin American rhythmic traditions, such as the habanera beat (the backbone of congo and tango music). A similar beat, the tresillo, found its way into the early jazz of New Orleans and was referred to by Jelly Roll Morton as the "Spanish tinge."
• Specific Cubin influence: The Cuban influence of Afro-Cuban jazz traces back to two traditions: son Cubano, a folk style from rural Cuba, and son montuno, a cosmopolitan adaptation of son Cubano. Concurrently, mambo—Cuban dance music popularized in Havana by bandleader Pérez Prado—also spilled over into American culture.
• Afro-Cuban music and jazz combine: In the 1940s, Afro-Cuban rhythms entered the mainstream of American jazz. Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo (aka Machito) brought the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans to New York. Around the same time, Dizzy Gillespie—a star of the bebop movement—joined forces with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo and wrote tunes like "Mangó Mangüé" and "Manteca," which became hits. Gillespie and Ponzo's amalgamation of Cuban music with bebop became known as "Cubop" in jazz circles.
• Mainstream success: By the 1950s, Afro-Cuban music powered many jazz hits. "Afro Blue," composed by Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaría, became the first true jazz standard built on a 3:2 clave pattern. The music became increasingly mainstream, and eventually non-Cuban musicians ran with the form. For instance, many Americans discovered Afro-Cuban jazz via Tito Puente, the Grammy-winning percussionist who came from a Puerto Rican family.
• Afro-Cuban jazz in Cuba: Eventually Afro-Cuban jazz also took hold in Cuba itself. Thanks to the efforts of Cuban musicians like Chucho Valdés and Paquito D'Rivera, the tradition lives on in Cuba as well as the United States.

Four elements characterize Afro-Cuban jazz.

1. 1. Afro-Cuban jazz instrumentation: True to its name, Afro-Cuban jazz combines instruments from both the American and Cuban traditions. A typical Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble might include saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, flute, piano, and bass from the American tradition. From the Latin music tradition, it often includes congas, bongos, timbales, claves, and various shakers. An American-style drum kit is optional but not mandatory.
2. 2. Afro-Cuban jazz rhythms: Traditional Afro-Cuban jazz is based on either the 3:2 son clave pattern or the 2:3 son clave pattern. These patterns are themselves West African in origin and were brought to the new world by African slaves. They made their way into Black Cuban culture and eventually into the dance music of Cuba. Popular examples of son clave in Afro-Cuban jazz include Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia," Cal Tjader's “Ritmo Uni,” Machito's “Minor Rama,” Paquito D'Rivera's “Son for Maura,” and Arturo Sandoval's “Dear Diz.”
3. 3. Afro-Cuban jazz harmonies: Some traditional Cuban styles like mambo and son Cubano have complex rhythms but very simple folk harmonies. In line with other jazz styles, Afro-Cuban jazz pushes the harmonic envelope. Instead of basic triads, the music favors four and five-note chords. It includes high-level harmonies like secondary dominant chords and entire progressions based on those secondary dominants. It also includes chromatic melodies inspired by those chords.
4. 4. Afro-Cuban jazz improvisation: In the spirit of all jazz music, the actual song form of an Afro-Cuban jazz tune is a jumping off point for extended improvisation. The key distinction is that the improvisation also extends to the traditional Latin percussion instruments. This means that a saxophone solo might be followed by a bongo and conga solo, or a trumpeter might "trade eights" with a timbale player. As time has gone on, Afro-Cuban jazz—and Latin jazz more broadly—has pushed ever-expanding boundaries, and its rhythms now pervade avant-garde jazz as well as more traditional styles.

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