Machito

Próximo articulo, tomado de:

http://jazzmuseuminharlem.org/today-in-jazz/happy-birthday-machito-and-bill-doggett/

Happy Birthday Machito and Bill Doggett!

February 16

Machito, born Frank Grillo in Tampa, FL in 1912, was the first, most important, successful and influential Latin jazz bandleader of the 20th Century. His band, which was known as “Machito’s Afro-Cubans,” was probably the first to meld Afro-Cuban rhythms with Western classical and jazz theory and instrumentation. The combination of Cuban percussion laying down polyrhythms behind traditional jazz big band brass and reed sections, not only influenced jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Stan Kenton, but was the major catalyst of the mambo dance craze of the post-World War II years. However, the “Afro-Cubans,” as they were called, gave fans of both Latin and jazz music an opportunity to dance at a time when contemporary jazz–known as bebop–had discouraged (whether deliberately or not) such terpsichorean ambitions. While Grillo was the band’s leader, he was more of a front man, singing, conducting and maraca-shaking (no mean feat). The creative genius behind the Afro-Cubans was Machito’s brother-in-law, trumpeter Mario Bauza, who not only conceived of a Latin-jazz fusion in the 1930s, while working with big bands such as Chick Webb and Cab Calloway (which is where Bauza met the musically curious Gillespie), but also played lead trumpet and wrote many of the Afro-Cubans’ arrangements. From the band’s beginning in 1940 through the years of its greatest success, Bauza encouraged Machito to hire many exceptional jazz soloists besides Parker and Gillespie to augment the band: Among them were Flip Phillips, Howard McGhee, Buddy Rich, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Mann, Curtis Fuller and Johnny Griffin. Machito, who formed the Afro-Cubans in 1940 and had a hit record, “Tanga,” the following year, found his greatest fame in the late 1940s and 1950s, where his band held forth at the legendary Manhattan dance club, the Palladium. The Afro-Cubans were the leading Latin dance band in New York City until the 1960s, when salsa, a new form of music–and a dance form it inspired–emanating from Puerto Rico, grabbed hold of Latin audiences. Machito made a comeback in the 1970s, the highlight of which is an LP with Dizzy Gillespie, Afro-Cuban Moods. He was on a successful tour of Europe when he died, in London, in 1984. But for now, let’s listen to Machito’s Afro-Cubans perform the title tune of what many consider to be their musical apotheosis, “Kenya,” here:

Hay un dicho que dice:

Más facil se agarra a un mentiroso que a un cojo.