Introduction

It is often believed that the fusion between jazz and Latin music began in the 1940’s and culminated with the collaboration of Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie in the Afro-Cuban Drums Suite. However, cross-fertilization between the two genres dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century, after Louisiana had joined the Union, when Cuban musicians accused of conspiring against the Spanish colonial regime fled to New Orleans where they found work at many of the city’s famed venues. It is not by accident that the Danzón and ragtime developed almost simultaneously, and both have analogous elements going back to a common source: the African elements distilled in Haiti and exported to Cuba and New Orleans.

Soon after the American occupation of Cuba following the Spanish American War of 1898, American jazz bands began to visit Cuba, and Cuban groups started to visit the United States, especially New York. It is known that W.C. Handy visited Cuba early around the turn of the century, and Jelly Roll Morton’s compositions became popular in Cuba as well. The influx of American capital into Cuba, and the subsequent creation of radio stations and recording companies gave a significant impetus to the propagation of Cuban music in the island and abroad.

The tourist industry, one of Cuba’s main sources of revenue after sugar cane and tobacco, also helped both the dissemination of Cuban music and the kind of music that was played and recorded. Furthermore, improved communications within the island permitted the blending of genres, such as the son and the rumba, that had developed independently and isolated from each other. The hunger for exotica on the part of tourists and the influence of American jazz on Cuban music favored a commercialization of urban Cuban music that set it apart both from Afro-Cuban religious music and from traditional rumba and son, which were played in the solares and in rural settings.

The commercialization of Cuban music continued with the creation of Las Vegas/Paris-like showplaces like Tropicana, Montmartre, and Sans Souci whose elaborate shows, geared towards international tourism, favored a big, stylized sound not unlike that of the American Big Band era. In this module we will explore the development of “export” Cuban bands, their cross-fertilization with American groups throughout the thirties, the forties, and the fifties, and the redefinition of Latin music as “salsa” in the late sixties and seventies.