Mongo Santamaría

One of the great Cuban congueros — Mongo Santamaría brought Afro-Cuban percussion into jazz and popular music, and his composition Afro Blue became a jazz standard covered by John Coltrane and many others.

About

Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría grew up in Havana's Afro-Cuban community, deeply immersed in the religious percussion traditions. He came to New York in the early 1950s and worked with Tito Puente and Cal Tjader before forming his own group. He is the composer of Afro Blue, which became one of the most important jazz standards of the post-bop era.

His work demonstrates the connection between Afro-Cuban religious percussion and jazz improvisation — the same rhythmic intelligence that underlies batá drumming and conga playing in the rumba tradition can be brought into dialogue with jazz harmony and structure. He remained active until late in his career, continuing to record and perform.