1

Lived realities in the jazz world as in the broader American social and cultural world are
more complex than our simple biracial categories would lead us to believe.- Sydney Bechet
Jazz was born out of complex cultural gumbo in New Orleans around the turn of the 20th
century. Often simplified to a black-white experience, the reality is much more complicated. The
evolution of what would become jazz was a lengthy process of cosmopolitanism that took place
in the Louisiana city over decades. Jazz would not have formed the way it did without the unique
contributions of Creole, Spanish, Cuban and Caribbean cultures. The acceptance and rejection of
these cultures musical elements synthesized and continued to evolve what jazz was through the
first half of the 20th century and beyond. There was a back and forth exchange between New
Orleans, and its neighbors in Havana, Veracruz in this formative period that contributed unique
rhythmic, instrumental, and cultural aspects of jazz that are often overlooked. Examining the
roles race and national identity play in addition to the rhythmic and instrumental contributions of
these cultures reveals a clear connection with the Latin American role in the formation of Jazz.

When discussing the early cultures present in New Orleans the most prominent were the
African American, the Anglo, and the Creole. Creole culture is a jumping point in regards to
cosmopolitan race relations and musical synthesis. The Creoles are a clear contributor to the New
Orleans musical scene, but defining their racial makeup is much more complicated. The Creole
culture is exemplary of Cosmopolitanism. Formed during the 19th century the Creoles were what
was regarded in New Orleans as a third class of "free people of color". Creoles descended from
French and Spanish ancestors, many of whom had been in Haiti before being displaced the New
Orleans during the slave revolt at the turn of the 19th century. Upon their exodus to New Orleans
their racial makeup became increasingly diverse. African American blood began to mix in with
this already mixed population to create a colored but free culture unique to New Orleans. Some

creoles defined the race as a mixture of Spanish and French. Another "my father was part negro
and French, my mother was Spanish and Negro so that makes me Creole. They say a Creole is a
direct descendant of a Frenchman and a Spaniard and I speak both languages fluently as did my
grandfather and grandmother. 1

The French influence on the Creole culture is where they developed their conservatory training
in reading music and playing European repertoire. Creoles studied with musicians of the French
opera house and with scores of itinerant Latin Americanand European conservatorytrainepderformers. They played with the diminutive early dance orchestras,the string and brass
bands of the downtown society,and were frequently superb readers. Whites and non-whites
exchanged places, musical data and much else. Despite the textbook image of racially torn
reconstruction, the 1880 federal census indicates the persistence of multi-racial households,
frequently led by French or Cuban-born patriarchs 2 Early Creole musicians knew spoken
French as children and lived in households where some members did not speak English well.
Satchmo (Armstrongs nickname) remarked that Manuel Perez 'couldn't talk so much English',
and Jelly Roll claimed that he did not speak English till the age of eleven-3 However, with the
passage of the Louisiana state law defining all persons with African ancestry as "Negroes" and
1 Charles Hiroshi Garrett, "Jelly Roll Morton and the Spanish Tinge," in Struggling to Define a

Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century, Berkeley: University of California Press,
2008

2 Thomas, Fierher. "From Quadrille to Stomp: The Creole Origins of Jazz." Popular Music 10,

no. 1 (1991): 21-38 Accessed April 1, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/853007

the high court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 legalizing racial segregation, Creoles
suddenly found themselves alienated from North American culture. The result of the passage of
this legislation. Some notable exceptions are Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Bunk Johnson,
Kid Ory, and Pete Fountain. Prior to the passage of this law, Creoles did not equate themselves
with blacks. They spoke a different language and had a different cultural background, and some
had been slave owners themselves. The passage of this law was a threat to their cultural identity
and caused them to remain a tight community. American blacks, on the other hand, perceived the
law as an opportunity to emigrate north and escape the prejudice and economic hardships of the
South; they were consequently more enthusiastic to travel than Creoles. 4 Defining Creole
culture would become more and more difficult entering the 20th century but its developing
influences remained prevalent.
The Spanish foundation of Creole culture in combination with the Cuban and Caribbean
rhythms is what most jazz musicians refer to as the Latin influence, or Spanish Tinge as coined
by pianist Jelly Roll Morton. It was Morton who discussed the disposal of latin rhythms within
jazz as being imperative. Before elaborating on the execution of these elements by Morton it is
important to examine the specific latin rhythms that that preceded and contributed to jazzs
development. Author Christopher Washburne has detailed the rhythmic specifics of Afro-Cuban
music. The influence of Cuban styles on jazz lies mostly in the presence of three rhythmic cells:
the cinquillo [(2+1)+(2+1)+2)] division of an eight- beat measure, a rhythm also prominent in
3 Ibid

4 Ibid

Haitian music; the tresillo (3+3+2) division of an eight-beat measure; and the son clave, which
can appear with either the three-stroke or two-stroke measure first and is labeled "3-2" or "2-3"
accordingly. Afro-Cuban rhythms form the most identifiable feature of Cuban music. Though the
rhythmic patterns present a unified complex, this complexity is an out- growth and the
elaboration of the primary building block of Cuban music: the unit of the clave." The Clave is
something that would be further integrated by Dizzy Gillespie in the assimilation of mambo to
what was coined Latin Jazz in the 1940s. All these rhythms were present in popular Cuban
musical styles such as the rumba, habanera, danzon, and son in the late nineteenth century and
are interrelated. The tresillo and the three- stroke measure of clave are identical and are widely
believed to be derived from the cinquillo rhythm. By omitting the second and fourth stroke of the
cinquillo, the tresillo rhythm is apparent.5
As cultures merged in New Orleans stylistic flexibility was required when playing dance
parties. Musicians needed to perform music that would appeal to the tastes of African American,
European-American, Creole, French, English, and Spanish audiences. Creole musicians were
keen to adapt to this multicultural synthesis. Blacks and Creoles would increase their
collaboration in the New Orleans dance bands of the early 20th century. At the turn of the century,
Cubans and their exports were embracing the Danzon, a songform and dance originating in
eastern Cuba. Originally viewed as risqu, the Danzon encouraged closer dancing and more
intimate motions with the hips. New Orleans Brass Bands would play Danzon which included a
vamp section at the beginning or end of the songform encouraging improvisation. This
Christopher Washburne. "The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic
Foundation of an African-American Music."
Black Music Research Journal 17, no. 1 (1997): 59-80. Accessed April 1, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/779360 .
5

improvisatory attitude is one that would be embraced in the crystallization of the art form of jazz.
This new idea of improvising to dancers would place new demands on musicians and become
essential in shaping the music in the coming decades. There would be different offshoots of jazz
and dance, some more Latin based, and others more based on swing. They each evolved in
parallel and should be examined individually.
Louis Armstrong would prove to be one of the most important figures in jazz history, and
his craft was partially developed in accompanying dancers to the emerging rhythms on the New
Orleans scene. This music would eventually evolve into what was known as swing. There was
the team of Brown and McGraw. They did a jazz dance that just wouldnt quit. Id blow for their
act, and every step they made, I put the notes to it. They liked the idea so well they had it
arranged. At one point Armstrongs memory failed him: he performed with Brown and McGraw
at the Sunset Caf, not the Dreamland.5 But others have confirmed his most intriguing remark
every step they made, I put the notes to it.6
It could be argued that as the music became more virtuostic, so did the dance, and they formed a
symbiotic relationship. The emphasis on difficult steps and speed in these accounts suggests
that by the time they arrived at the Sunset, Brown and McGraw specialized in a form of rhythm
tap or jazz tap, a style distinguished from ordinary tap by its complex rhythmic patterns,
underlying swing feel, and, perhaps above all, constant change. Brown and McGraw. The
development of rhythm tap formed part of a general trend toward greater kinetic intensity in jazz
dancing over the course of the 1920s. The acrobatic movements of Brown and McGraw relate to
6

Brian Harker, "Louis Armstrong Eccentric Dance, And The Evolution Of Jazz On The Eve Of
Swing" Journal of the American Musilogical Society 61, no. 1 (2008): 67-122 Accessed April 1,
2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2008.61.1.67

another important development from this period as well: the birth of the Lindy hop. Cheatham
said they did a fast dance like it was I think . . . before the jitterbug [aka the Lindy hop], in
which Herbert would throw her all around.109 Dan Healey, a producer of floorshows at the
Cotton Club, was more direct: Brown and McGraw, I think, started the jazz craze. They were a
Lindy hop team, man and wife.7
These dances would be further explored by Duke Ellingtons orchestra in New York over the
next decade. At the Cotton Club, Ellingtons band was expected to provide music for the
African-themed floor shows, with their primitive or exotic dramatic scenarios, chorus line of
seminude high-yaller gals (light-skinned blacks), and eccentric dance features like Snake Hips
Tucker and Jigsaw Jackson. To strike the right dramatic tone, Ellington cultivated his so-called
jungle style, with tom-toms, minor keys, chromatic harmonies, wailing reeds, andabove all
growling muted brass that imitated the sounds of wild animals. Entranced by this music, Dodge
choreographed dances to Ellington recordings such as East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, Black and
Tan Fantasy, and The Mooche.42 Judging from films made of his dancing to these pieces in
1937, Dodge developed a sort of jazz-ballet hybrid for this music.8
However, this was only one branch of dance related to jazz. There were was an evolution of
Latin music and dance coinciding with this timeline that eventually led to another development
in New York in the 1940s, Mambo. As Frank "Machito" Grillo repeatedly maintained,
American jazz and Cuban rumbas had the same African roots, "only our music is older. We play
7
Ibid

8
Ibid

this way in Cuba for over a hundred years" This interrelationship between jazz and Caribbean
music was maintained throughout the 1930s and 1940s by Machito's employment of North
American jazz musicians in his Latin band and by Ellington's use of Creole and Latin musicians
both as co- composers and players, placing demands on these musicians similar to those
experienced by New Orleans brass band musicians over one hundred years earlier.9
Latin America has produced a variety of genres born at the crossroads of European folk music,
African music and native traditionsCuba was the starting point for many of the Latin dances.
Other important contributors include Argentina and the Tango, and Calypso from Trinidad. All
these styles lead to Mambo and its infusion with Jazz in the 1940s in New York City setting off
what is referred to as the Latin Jazz movement.
During the "belle epoque" (1890s), the working class of the "Boca" of Buenos Aires
(Argentina) invented a new rhythm, the tango. Tan-go was the name given to the drums of the
African slaves, and the music was influenced by both the Cuban habanera and the local milonga.
The choreography originally devised in the brothels to mimick the obscene and violent
relationship between the prostitute, her pimp and a male rival eventually turned into a dance and
a style of music of a pessimistic mood, permeated by a fatalistic sense of an unavoidable destiny,
a music of sorrow enhanced by the melancholy sound of the bandoneon. Tango was embraced

Christopher Washburne. "The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic

Foundation of an African-American Music."
Black Music Research Journal 17, no. 1 (1997): 59-80. Accessed April 1, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/779360 .

enthusiastically in Europe and landed in the USA in the 1910s. The tango craze took New York
by storm during World War I10
Trinidad's Calypso, was another Latin dance to reach beyond Latin America. Calypso was
originally sung in French, but the first recorded calypso song, Julian Whiterose's Iron Duke in
the Land (1914), was already in English.11 Calypso was associated with Carnivale and most
calypso records are still released just before or during carnival season. Since there was no
recording equipment in Trinidad the musicians had to travel to New York in order to record their
songs. This plays into the New York cosmopolitanism. During the 1940s, Trinidad's musicians
developed the concept of the steel band, this drastically changed the sound of calypso.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Cuba's main music was the "son", a
fusion of Spanish popular music and the African rhythm rumba. Rumba would be another style
that would rise to popularity in the 1930s. Son was traditionally played with tres (guitar),
contrabass, bongos and claves (wooden sticks that set the circular rhythm) the son of Cuba was
popularized by the likes of Ignacio Pineiro, who had an hit with Echale Salsita (1929), and
Miguel Matamores. The danzon, first documented by Miguel Failde Perez's Las Alturas de
Simpson (1879), was a descendant of the French "contredanse" or contradanza, and in Cuba's
1920s the danzon became a version of the son for the upper classes, performed by "charangas"

10

Piero Scaruffi. A History Of Popular Music Before Rock Music. Houston: Omniware, 2007.
11
Ibid

(flute and violin orchestras, in which the violin provided the main riff while the flute
improvised.12
In the 1930s and 40s, dance halls often had a Latin orchestra alternate with a big band.
Latin music had Americans dancing -- the samba, paso doble, and rumba -- and, in three distinct
waves of immense popularity, the mambo, cha-cha and salsa. The tango craze was followed in
the 1930s and 40s by the rhumba craze. In fact, the misspelled rhumba was not the authentic
Afro-Cuban rumba, but a simplified version of the Cuban son made seductive for use in
American middle-class lounges and ballrooms. The rhumba craze in the United States began
with the immense popularity of the standard El Manisero, also called The Peanut Vendor,
first performed in 1930 on Broadway by the visiting Cuban orchestra of Don Azpiazu.13

The parallel paths of Jazz and the evolving latin popular music in America would finally diverge
in the 1940s. As the popularity of Latin music grew in the United States, a new generation of
musicians would continue to synthesize their native countrys music with the sounds of America.
Some important names include Cuban pianist Jose Curbelo played with Cugat and mentored
Ernesto "Tito" Puente, Ray Barretto and Pablo "Tito" Rodriguez, who mentored Eddie Palmieri.
American singer Frank "Machito" Grillo played with Cugat and Norales, and then raised Puente.
The growing appeal of Latin music was evident in the late 1940s and 50s, when mambo was all
the rage, attracting dance audiences of all backgrounds throughout the United States, and giving
12
Ibid
13

Juan Flores, "Latin Rhythms From Mambo To Hip Hop." Accessed April 2, 2014.

10

Latinos unprecedented cultural visibility. Mambo, an elaboration on traditional Cuban dance

forms like el danzn, la charanga and el son, took strongest root in New York City, where it
reached the peak of its artistic expression in the performances and recordings of bandleader
Machito (Frank Grillo) and his big-band orchestra, Machito and His Afro-Cubans.14

The parallel paths of Jazz and the evolving Latin popular music in America would finally
diverge in the 1940s. In American popular culture Dizzy Gillespie, often regarded as the next
great trumpeter after Louis Armstrong would assimilate congo virtuoso Chano Pozo into his
band to change the sound of jazz forever. At the same time Cuban bandleader and arranger
Mario Bauza (whod already worked with Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway and Chick Webb)
was crafting his own mambo tinged Latin jazz in early 1940s in New York City, fusing jazz
arrangements with percussive Afro-Cuban rhythms as musical director for vocalist Machito and
his Afro-Cubans big band. New York City is a port city, like New Orleans, says Sanabria, who
worked with Bauza for eight years. But its a metropolitan, urban mega-center where the
rhythms of Cuba thrived in Spanish Harlem. Cubans and Puerto Ricans adopted, adapted and
spread the music to the South Bronx and beyond. Other Cuban musicians like Perez Prado and
Beny More rose into fame at this time. It couldnt have happened in any other place. So the root
branch of the Latin-jazz continuum, Afro-Cuban jazz, wasnt born in Cuba, but in New York
City.15
The period discussed is the launching point for what would become popularly known as
Latin Jazz. After 1950 there would be a massive Latin ascension into jazz. It would become some
14

Piero Scaruffi. A History Of Popular Music Before Rock Music. Houston: Omniware, 2007.

11

of the most popular music of the late 1950s and its development continues today.. The styles
mentioned above come from a multitudes of countries and contributed a great deal to the
timeline. It can be concluded that without the Latin influence from its inception jazz would not
be what it is today. The presence of Afro-Cuban, Afro-Caribbean, and other Latin Rhythms and
harmonies were intertwined with the growth of jazz and the originators of the art form openly
discussed that fact. It is surprising that there is not more stress put on the role of Latin and
Carribean people in teaching the history of what is often referred to as Americas only
homegrown art. As history continues to evaluate these influences the Latin foundation should
surface as imperative to jazzs existence.

Works Cited

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. (New York: W.W.
Norton Company, 2006.
Canclini, Nestor Garcia. "Negotiation of Identity in Popular Classes." in Consumers and
Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2001

15

Bill Meredith, "Latin Jazz: The Latin Tinge." Accessed April 1,

2014.http://jazztimes.com/articles/19036-latin-jazz-the-latin-tinge

12

Fiehrer, Thomas "From Quadrille to Stomp: The Creole Origins of Jazz." Popular Music 10, no.
1 (1991): 21-38 Accessed April 1, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/853007
Flores, Juan. "Latin Rhythms From Mambo To Hip Hop." Accessed April 2, 2014.
http://americasmusic.tribecafilminstitute.org/session/view/latin-rhythms-from-mambo-to-hip-hop

Garrett, Charles Hiroshi. "Jelly Roll Morton and the Spanish Tinge," in Struggling to Define a
Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century, Berkeley: University of California Press,
2008
Harker, Brian. "Louis Armstrong Eccentric Dance, And The Evolution Of Jazz On The Eve Of
Swing" Journal of the American Musilogical Society 61, no. 1 (2008): 67-122 Accessed April 1,
2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2008.61.1.67 .
Hijuelos, Oscar. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. London: Hyperion Press, 2010.
Lopez, Ana M. "Of Rhythms and Borders," in Everyday Nightlife: Culture and Dance in Latino
America. Edited by Celeste Fraser Delgado and Jose Esteban Munoz. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1997
Meredith, Bill. "Latin Jazz: The Latin Tinge." Accessed April 1,
2014.http://jazztimes.com/articles/19036-latin-jazz-the-latin-tinge
Moore, Robin, and Alejandro Madrid, Danzon: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and
Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997
Sacruffi, Piero. A History Of Popular Music Before Rock Music. Houston: Omniware, 2007.
Washburne, Christopher. "The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic
Foundation of an African-American Music."
Black Music Research Journal 17, no. 1 (1997): 59-80. Accessed April 1, 2014.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/779360 .

13