The origin of mambo

Mambo was born in the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Haiti. Interestingly, there is no dance called mambo in Haiti. Mambo's name refers to the name of a priestess. She gathered political advisers, doctors, diviners, exorcists and organizers of public activities in the village. Mambo's name comes from the name of this priestess. According to legend, this priestess can make people hallucinate and show unusual enthusiasm and self-satisfaction in all people's entertainment and even religious activities. The music of Cuba, a Caribbean island, is the foundation of mambo music. The original mambo dance was produced in the form of swing dance, because it has strong stimulation and can release people's enthusiasm. For Latin Americans under the influence of religion at that time, it was undoubtedly a very attractive dance. However, many mambo dancers are regarded as vulgar representatives by the local church because of their "informal" dance style, which is in great conflict with traditional religious culture. Of course, with the gradual weakening of the influence of religion on people's lives, Latin Americans have gradually broken through this bondage, allowing their inner feelings to be naturally revealed.

There are still many factors restricting MAMBO's early popularity in Latin America, because American jazz music, which was very popular in society at that time, was not combined with Cuban traditional music, which led to a very slow promotion progress. Here I have to mention a great Cuban artist, Perez Prado, who was in the 1940s (about 1943). Musicians and dancers from all over Latin America were attracted by this new dance, and began to establish different mambo schools based on this basic dance form according to their own characteristics, and began to form this dance into fashion culture. Among them, Tito Rodriguez, Pupi Campo, Tito Puente, Machito and Xavier Cugat are more representative.

Speaking of mambo music, many people think it is very similar to salsa and cha-cha. We will explain the reasons behind the article. Mambo music is very similar to rumba in the early days, or the second and fourth beats of rumba and improvisational repetitive music are particularly aggravated or paused. For Cuban bands, they can pause at any beat, while the rhythm of traditional 4/4 music is heavy, light, second heavy and light, which is obviously different from the rhythm of mambo music.