Mambo (music) - Dance

Dance

In 1943, a musician named Perez Prado introduced the dance for mambo music, the mambo dance. He introduced it at La Tropicana night-club in Havana in 1943. He also became the first person to market his music as Mambo. After Havana, Prado moved his music to Mexico, where his music and the dance were adopted. The original mambo dance was characterized by freedom and complicated foot-steps. Some Mexican entertainers became well known dancers like Tongolele, Adalberto Martínez, Rosa Carmina, Tin tan and Lilia Prado. Most of these accompanied Prado in live presentations or were seen in Mexican films.

While mambo became more recognized in the United States, the Cuban dance wasn't accepted by many professional dance teachers. Cuban dancers would describe mambo as "feeling the music" in which sound and movement were merged through the body. Professional dance teachers in the US saw this approach to dancing as "extreme", "undisciplined", and thus, deemed it necessary to standardize the dance to present it as a sell-able commodity for the social or ballroom market Thus, compared to the mambo in Cuba, mambo had a different movement sequence in the United States and elsewhere, as it was popularized internationally. The popularized "mambo" in the United States would be viewed as a variant of son or salsa among Cuban dance and music specialists, and would later evolve into a mixture of salsa and rumba that is expressed in clubs and social settings worldwide.

Following in the footsteps of Prado came a wave of mambo musicians, such as Enrique Jorrín. Some experimented with new techniques, such as faster beats and the use of side steps in the dance; this latter innovation formed the foundation of cha-cha-cha, and was the result of Jorrin's experimentation.