Tito Puente
The "King of Latin Music" — Tito Puente dominated New York's Latin dance scene for five decades, bringing Cuban-rooted rhythms to American concert halls and dance floors and defining what timbales could do as a lead instrument.
About
Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, Puente grew up in Spanish Harlem surrounded by Cuban music and became one of its greatest ambassadors. He studied at Juilliard and developed an approach to the timbales that transformed the instrument from a time-keeper into a virtuosic lead voice, combining jazz drumming technique with Afro-Cuban rhythmic knowledge.
As a bandleader at the Palladium Ballroom in 1950s New York, he was one of the triumvirate (alongside Tito Rodríguez and Machito) who drove the mambo"> mambo era. His Latin jazz recordings and dance band albums span more than 100 records. He is also the original composer of Oye Como Va, later made famous by Carlos Santana. His timbales work remains the benchmark for the instrument in Cuban popular music.
Mambo
In Cuban music, especially in salsa and son,
the " mambo" section typically refers to a brassy, rhythmically intense instrumental break,
often featuring repetitive horn lines, call-and-response patterns, and building energy toward the climax of a song.
Mambo
In Cuban music, especially in salsa and son,
the "mambo" section typically refers to a brassy, rhythmically intense instrumental break,
often featuring repetitive horn lines, call-and-response patterns, and building energy toward the climax of a song.
Son dance is the foundation of all Cuban popular partner dancing — smooth, intimate, grounded, and musical. Every Cuban dance style that followed ( mambo"> mambo, casino, timba"> timba) builds on the body vocabulary and structure established by son.
Lees meer >The timbales (pailas criollas) are a pair of shallow, metal-shell drums mounted on a stand, played with wooden sticks. They are the rhythmic engine of charanga orchestras and play a critical role in timba"> timba.
Lees meer >Mambo was Cuba's first global music explosion — the form that put Cuban rhythms on dance floors from New York to Tokyo in the late 1940s and 1950s, and the direct ancestor of the Latin big band sound.
Lees meer >