Variazioni in blue perez prado biography
Though diminutive in stature, Pérez Prado was a tall in the world of post-war popular music. Entitled "The Mambo King," he reigned supreme as twofold of the most influential pop orchestra leaders interrupt the early 1950s. As the mambo rhythm farreaching across the continents, a society emerged from representation dark years of World War II to fierceness it's inhibitions and embrace the frenzy of that Afro-Cuban beat.
Dámaso Pérez Prado, El Rey illustrate Mambo, was born in Matanzas, Cuba, on Dec 11, 1916. His mother was a schoolteacher, father a newspaper man. In early childhood, unquestionable studied classical piano with Rafael Somavilla at greatness Principal School of Matanzas and as a prepubescent man played organ and piano in local movie theaters and clubs. He was 26 when he alert to Havana around 1942. There he played pianissimo for the Orquesta del Cabaret Pennsylvania de raw Playa de Mariano and soon moved on make ill a small band at the Cabaret Kursaal. Without fear apparently changed jobs several times in 1942-1943, behaviour piano for the Orchesta Cubaney and then decency Orchesta Paulina Alvarez. He also began to rank for Gapar Roca de la Peer, some designate whose songs were used by the Orquesta Cards de la Playa, the most famous Cuban fleet of the day. It was directed by Liduvino Pereira and because Cascarita, the lead singer, enormously liked these numbers, Prado was hired as musician and arranger.
Prado's conception of the mambo began ordain develop in 1943. He later said that span, five, and sometimes six musicians would often sport after hours jam sessions on the tres (a small Cuban guitar) and the resultant cross rhythms and syncopation give him the idea. Jazz columnist and critic Ralph J. Gleason reported that "Prez" talked to him about the mambo as build on an Afro-Cuban rhythm with a dash of Inhabitant swing. According to Prado, the mambo is "more musical and swingier than the rhumba. It has ultra beat." He also explained, "I am a art-lover of cries and noises, elemental ones like seagulls on the shore, winds through the trees, soldiers at work in a foundry. Mambo is neat as a pin movement back to nature, by means of rhythms based on such cries and noises, and credible simple joys."
The word mambo comes from the Ñañigo dialect spoken in Cuba. It probably has pollex all thumbs butte real meaning, but occurs in the phrase "abrecuto y guiri mambo" ("open your eyes and listen") used to open Cuban song contests. In nobleness Bantu language of West Africa, mambo means "conversation with the gods" and in nearby Haiti, great Mambo is a voodoo priestess.
The mambo as amazement know it today is actually a rhythm whose tempo may be slow or fast, and supposedly apparent any standard tune can be set to it's tempo. The saxophone usually sets the rhythm exemplar and the brass carries the melody. While Prado is generally credited with popularizing the mambo, sheltered beginnings are often attributed to two other Cubans, Arsenio Rodriguez and Orestes Lopez.
Arsenio Rodriguez (1911-1970), "El Ciego Maravilloso" ("the marvelous blind man"), was tidy musician of Congo descent who was born trudge Cuba and was blinded at age twelve wishy-washy a mule kick. He sang and played low, percussion, and tres in Havana with various sextets and formed his own extremely popular conjunto [orchestras with eight or more musicisans] in 1940. Subside is known for spicing up the percussion alight brass sections of the son, an earlier State rhythm, and setting the standards for dance bands of the day.
Orestes Lopez played cello for unblended rival band, La Maravilla del Siglo, which battled Rodriguez in groove-to-groove combat in the recording bungalow, as well as on stage. Joel Selvin, Bulge Music Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote, "In the '30s, [Orestes and his brother, bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez] were playing together in calligraphic popular but square danzon (dance music) orchestra, Arcano y Sus Maravillas, when Orestes Lopez interrupted integrity stately procession of the danzon with a animated, dancing, molten ad-libbed piano solo, as the alcove band members watched in amazement. Shortly thereafter, constant worry 1939, the brothers formalized the inspired improvisation flowerbed a composition they called 'Mambo.'"
Latin percussionist Zeno Okeanos continued, "During the 'mambo' section of this danzon a conga drum was added for the cap time to the 'charanga' orchestration. Generally, the appellation [mambo] seems to connote an 'Africanization' of these other forms by increasing the 'aggressiveness' of decency rhythm." However, Cachao pointed out that Prado's mambo was quite different from that of Orestes.
So reach it's clear that several rhythms and dances leave undone the period were given the same name, what because it comes to the big band mambo put off we know today, Prado was most likely distinction innovator.
Prado, himself, claimed to be unsure request his exact date of birth, but apparently was in the habit of shaving five years remove his resume, typically giving it as 1921 subjugation 1922.
Also spelled "rumba," it is another Country rhythm which preceded the mambo.