Afro-Latin Music in the United States

The early twentieth century American presence in Cuba facilitated a cultural exchange between Afro-Cuban artists and some of America’s leading representatives of the Harlem Renaissance—a cross-fertilization that significantly influenced afrocubanismo. Langston Hughes' 1929 visit to Havana allowed for a meeting between him and Nicolás Guillén, who greatly admired Hughes for his success in transcribing the essence of black popular musical forms such as blues and jazz into American literature. Likewise, Guillén used son as vehicle for his most original poetic expression.

Source: American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music

The first Cuban musical ambassador to the U.S. of note was Mario Bauzá, a trumpet player who joined Chick Webb's jazz orchestra in 1933 and quickly infused Latin sensibilities into the jazz idiom. Latin Jazz emerged as a distinct genre in the New York clubs of the 1940s, where orchestras like Machito & His Afro-Cubans—the first band name to acknowledge African roots —performed to increasing popularity. Bauzá, who was Machito's brother-in-law, served as the band's musical director and helped construct the new music on an Afro-Cuban rhythmic foundation, but added jazz orchestrations derived from swing and improvisation on top. The addition of a young timbale player named Tito Puente added another exciting dimension to the emerging sound. Jazz luminaries like Dizzy Gillespie was a great admirer of the new Latin music and added the now-legendary Cuban conguero Chano Pozo to his band. Soon enough, congas began to appear in other jazz bands, infusing their songs with the clave rhythms that form the core of Afro-Cuban music. 

     Cuba's mambo was pioneered by bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez and fused rumba rhythms with big-band jazz; exemplar recordings include Dámaso Pérez Prado's Mambo Jumbo (1948). 

      The Palladium Ballroom was a New York club at 53rd & Broadway renowned as an epicenter for Latin music and dance in the U.S., and for the list of legendary artists who performed there, which includes Machito, Arsenio Rodríguez, Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, Celia Cruz, La Sonora Matancera, Beny Moré, and many more.

     In the 1940s, Arsenio Rodríguez, a virtuoso of the tres (Cuban guitar with three groups of double strings), set the standard for the Cuban conjunto (group) by adding congas, piano and trumpets to the traditional guitar-based sextet, thus pioneering a type of son with novel instrumentation.