Danzón-mambo

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Danzón-mambo, also called danzón de nuevo ritmo, is a Cuban dance music style that bridges the classic danzón with mambo and cha-cha-chá. It helped shape the modern charanga dance band in Cuba. The music was created by Antonio Arcaño’s charanga, Arcaño y sus Maravillas, founded in 1937. The main contributors were the Lopez brothers, Orestes and Israel “Cachao” Lopez, who did much of the composing and arranging and played cello and bass.

Danzón-mambo adds more elements of the son to danzón. The early sections stay close to traditional danzón, but the final section uses tumbaos and guajeos from the montuno of son, creating complex, clave-driven polyphony with strong upbeat accents. Arcaño also added the tumbadora (conga drum) to the usual charanga percussion of pailas and güiro, and the paila player began using a cowbell in the final section. This finale was first called nuevo ritmo and later became known as mambo.

From danzón-mambo came mambo and cha-cha-chá. Mambo later became popular with American big bands and did not threaten the danzón-mambo, but cha-cha-chá’s rise in the 1950s helped the danzón-mambo fade. A common practice then was to play the final section in cha-cha-chá rhythm, allowing dancers to do both danzón and cha-cha-chá in the same piece. This form, danzón-cha, is now the style most favored by Cuban dancers.