Afro-Cuban Jazz

Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz first emerged in 1943 with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, based in New York City. In 1947 the collaborations of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban jazz into the jazz mainstream. Bauza's initial composition within the genre was referred to as a descarga, while Gillespie's approach was originally called cubop. During its first decades, the Afro-Cuban jazz movement was stronger in the United States than in Cuba itself.