Latin Jazz (English)

Written as a companion to the Smithsonian Institution's early-21st-century traveling exhibition of the same name, University of California social sciences professor Raul Fernandez's LATIN JAZZ: THE PERFECT COMBINATION traces the growth of the genre, from its late-1940s birth at the hands of Latin and American musicians like Chano Pozo, Mario Bauza, and Dizzy Gillespie to its later mass acceptance as an integral part of jazz. Originally primarily the music of Puerto Rico and Cuba, and imported into the US by early-20th-century immigrants to New York, Latin music flowered in the clubs and dance halls of immigrant communities throughout the 1930s. In the mid-1940s, when jazz artists began incorporating Latin rhythms into their compositions and Latin bandleaders in turn assimilated jazz idioms into theirs, the "perfect combination" was achieved: Latin music broadened the jazz vocabulary, while jazz accentuated the Caribbean music's African roots. With a wealth of photographs, manuscripts, and album cover illustrations, as well as interviews with many musicians who formed an integral part of the genre's history, LATIN JAZZ is an illuminating study of a vibrant addition to American jazz culture. minimize