It inspired an international dance craze in the ’50s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in the ’80s and a major Hollywood movie in the ’90s.
But the lilting Cuban rhythm known as the mambo is much subtler and more profound than its many commercial spinoffs might suggest.
Indeed, only in the past year or so have American audiences come to know the full majesty of the mambo–and related dance forms–thanks to the late-breaking stardom of a septuagenarian Cuban musician known simply as Cachao (pronounced ka-CHOW).
Though Oscar Hijuelos’ 1989 novel “The Mambo Kings” drew wide critical acclaim and inspired a 1992 film starring Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas, its protagonists–loosely based on Cuban musicians of the ’50s–were artistic descendants of the real mambo king, Cachao. Hijuelos eloquently chronicled the adventures of the Cuban virtuosos who arrived in New York in the ’50s, but Cachao’s equally remarkable story dates at least a generation earlier.
What’s more, it’s a tale that would have been lost to the world were it not for a mesmerizing documentary film, “Cachao . . . Like His Rhythm, There Is No Other,” and a splendid recording, “Cachao: The Master Sessions, Vol. 1,” both released last year. With the newly issued video version of the film (on Epic) and a striking follow-up CD, “Master Sessions, Vol. 2” (Crescent Moon/Epic), Cachao once again finds himself thrust belatedly into the limelight.
“I certainly never expected anything like this,” says Cachao, speaking through a translator from his rented apartment in Miami. “I am a musician. I never dreamed I would be in movies.”
The film and the recordings that star Cachao, however, do more than point a spotlight on a deserving musician. More important, they detail Cachao’s seminal role in the evolution of Latin music and document the splendor of the music itself.
For Cachao, who was born Israel Lopez, the musical journey began in 1922, when, as a 4-year-old in Havana, he took up the double bass. His interest was not surprising, considering that fully 35 members of his extended family played the instrument.
“I studied with my father, Pedro Lopez, and my (older) brother, Orestes Lopez, and when they couldn’t teach me, my uncle, my aunt, my mother taught me,” says Cachao, with a laugh.
“Everybody in the family taught me–I could not escape it.”
By the time he was 8, Cachao was performing publicly in a Havana pop group (“The Band of the Beautiful Sea”), and at 12 he had advanced to no less than the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra. Though Cachao had to be perched on a soap box to stand even with his colleagues in the bass section, he held his own in Havana’s top classical orchestra for years to come.
With this kind of experience, and with his remarkable pedigree, perhaps it was no surprise that by age 22, Cachao–joined by his brother Orestes–would conceive a composition that would set a new beat for popular Cuban music. They titled their work simply “Mambo.”
“The word `mambo’ comes from the people of the Congo, from certain tribes in Africa,” explains Cachao. “It was a little syncopated song that they would sing to the children to put them to sleep. . . . And every one of these little songs had a little different story, almost like a nursery rhyme, which African people knew since they were children.
“And that was the inspiration for our `Mambo,’ although what we created was very different from their mambos.”
Indeed, if the ancient African form of the genre was rhythmically gentle and lilting, its Cuban counterpart bristled with syncopations and shifting musical accents.
As Cachao says in the film, “The Cubans have an infinite amount of rhythms,” and many of them inexorably worked their way into his “Mambo,” first recorded in 1939.
“We thought it was going to be a big hit, but the dancers really hesitated, because it was too fast.
“At that time in Cuba, there was a lot of romanticism, the danzon was really strong, so we slowed down our `Mambo,’ and that is when it really took off.”
In other words, the mambo that American audiences later would consume in the television appearances of Desi Arnaz and in the immensely popular recordings of Perez Prado and Xavier Cugat, among others, bore only a distant relation to the real thing. If the American mambo was fast, loud and heavily accented, its more authentic forebear was intensely lyrical, romantic, rhythmically intricate and never rushed.
That much is apparent from both volumes of Cachao’s recent “Master Sessions” recordings, but especially from the first. Here, Cachao’s original “Mambo” exudes a lyric sophistication as well as a gently undulating backbeat.
Even so, Cachao does not begrudge those such as Prado and Cugat, who later would popularize the mambo and other Cuban dance idioms in somewhat corrupted form. On the contrary, Cachao thanks them.
“I love Perez Prado, and all Cuban musicians of any stature owe a lot to him,” says Cachao. “They all respect him for his creativity and his ability, and, more important, for his marketing ability.
“He was the guy who, along with (singer) Benny More, was able to take the mambo and internationalize it, to get the attention of the whole world, and we are all eternally grateful to him for it. If he popularized it in a faster form, so what?
“And it wasn’t like today, when you can get the word out instantly and promote it. At that time, things worked real slowly, but Perez Prado broke those doors down, and we all were able to jump on board.”
Cachao, however, didn’t jump on board. While such colleagues as Machito, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo and others went to New York in the ’40s and ’50s and made great names for themselves, Cachao stayed behind in Havana, refining the traditions he had helped invent.
By 1957, he was creating yet a new sound, with his fabled recordings of the “Cuban Jam Sessions” or “Descargas.” Never before had anyone gathered Havana’s top musicians in a recording studio for a freewheeling improv session. The musical results were revolutionary, merging Cuban musical idioms with the improvisatory techniques and rhythmic swing of African-American jazz.
“When the `Descargas’ started out, the idea wasn’t anything more than to just get all the best musicians in the studio and just jam,” says Cachao. “They all knew each other, and they were all pretty much doing straight (non-jazz) gigs.
“And what happened was that as people started coming in, everybody got inspired, and they started getting pretty serious about this, and we wound up having some pretty tremendous sessions. The sessions were so informal and so unstructured that the tapes actually sat around for a couple of years before someone came along, heard them and decided to release them.
“And it turned out they were important, because, because here the Latin musicians (in Cuba) were able to show that they, too, were part of the tradition of improvisation and inspiration.”
By 1962, Cachao had fled Cuba, working thereafter in Europe and the United States in relative obscurity, though revered by anyone who understood the legacy of Cuban music.
Among his admirers was actor Andy Garcia, who was born in Cuba and whose family was known to Cachao. With his Hollywood clout, Garcia arranged to film a 1992 Miami concert featuring Cachao in an updated “Jam Sessions” show, which resulted in the “Cachao” movie and the two recordings.
“It was all masterminded by Cachao,” Garcia has said, referring to the weeklong recording sessions that produced both of the CDs. “It was a historical event. The music was like a live organism of sound . . . and he’s the driving force of the rhythm.”
In the film, Garcia asks Cachao about the future.
“I am an old man,” says the maestro, who’s now 77, “and the only thing I ask young people is that they maintain the tradition.”
Certainly Cachao has done his part in establishing it.
THE FACTS
Cachao on video and CD
“Cachao…Like His Rhythm There Is No Other”(Epic Music Video). This exquisite music documentary shows Cachao in performance, in conversation and in rehearsal.
“Cachao Master Sessions, Vol. 1″(Cresent Moon/Epic). The first of Cachao’s new CDs offers definitive performances of mambo, rumba, danzon and other classic Cuban dance forms.
“Cachao: Master Sessions, Vol. 2″(Cresent Moon/Epic). The new follow-up CD is bolder and more freewheeling than its predecessor, with an emphasis on improvised pieces.
