What Is Machito's Influence On New York City

exchanges among an assortment of black, creole, Spanish, French, and white North American musicians. The renewed force with which Latin music emerge in jazz beginning in the late 1910s owes to a rapid migration of musicians from postcolonial Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Panama to New York City.” (Moreno 82) Two of the biggest influences on New York City jazz artists at this time were the both Cuban immigrants, Machito and his composer and arranger Mario Bauza. Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo, also known as “Machito”, was successful in the fusion of “Harlem jazz with the supremely danced based aesthetic of Afro-Cuban popular music, thus connecting two centers of African diaspora.” (Austerlitz 43) Although he learned music growing

(Austerlitz 44) One of Stan Kenton biggest selling records, the 1948 version of the Cuban written song “The Peanut Vendor”, used Machito’s percussion section and became the biggest selling instrumental version of the song, making Afro-Cuban music more accessible to Americans. Afro-Cuban music continued to spark Kenton’s interest and he found more success when he teamed up with his arranger Johnny Richards and Machito to record the 1956 album Cuban Fire. This album came at a time when big bands were trying to reinvent their style due to the popularity of smaller piece bands in rock and roll and jazz. Mario Bauza came to New York City on a three-and-a-half-day boat ride from Havana in 1927 playing in Antonio Maria Romeu’s charanga orchestra. After spending years playing with some of the most legendary musicians such as Cab Calloway and Chick Webb, Bauza wanted to form his own style of music. Bauza launched the careers of Ella Fitzgerald while he was in Webb’s band and later helped Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane form relationships with Afro-Cuban players important to his

The effect can be seen in the autobiography of Dizzy Gillespie, where he writes ‘‘very early, the tunes I wrote, like ‘Pickin’ the Cabbage’ sounded Latin oriented or expressed a Latin feeling, like putting West Indian hot sauce in some black-eye peas or hot Cuban peppers in a dish of macaroni.’’ (Moreno 80) When be-bop music and Afro-Cuban music merged it form a time in jazz that was “mostly exciting, varied and constantly changing” with even the least “Cu-bop” style bands playing at least one “Latinish” song in their shows. (Roberts 91) Dizzy Gillespie’s work with Luciano ‘‘Chano’’ Pozo is considered “one of the germinal moments in the history of intercultural music making of the second half of the twentieth century” and followed “distinct lineage [in jazz] of Pan-African music making”. (Garcia 196) This Latin effect on be-bop was not easy or natural as most Afro-Cuban musicians were used with playing with larger ensembles like Stan Kenton, Machito and even Duke Ellington. We can see the innovation and difficulty in the Dizzy Gillespie’s recollection of allowing Pozo into his small jazz band “Chano was the first conga player to play with a jazz band, and he was very unusual about playing with an understanding. There were certain things about our music that he didn’t understand.” Pozo “wasn’t a writer, but stone African. He knew rhythm—rhythm from Africa’’. This lead to