10 Facts About Cuban jazz

Afro-Cuban jazz emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City.

For more than a quarter-century in which the cakewalk, ragtime, and Cuban jazz were forming, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music.

Buddy Bolden, the first known Cuban jazz musician, is credited with creating the big four, a habanera-based pattern.

Consensus among musicians and musicologists is that the first jazz piece to be based in-clave was "Tanga" composed by Cuban-born Mario Bauza and recorded by Machito and his Afro-Cubans.

The day before at La Conga Club, Mario Bauza, Machito's trumpeter and music director, heard pianist Luis Varona and bassist Julio Andino play El Botellero composition and arrangements of the Cuban jazz-born Gilberto Valdez which would serve as a permanent sign off tune.

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Afro-Cuban jazz was invented when Bauza composed "Tanga" that evening.

Cuban jazz mastered both types of music, but it took time for him to teach the jazz musicians in Machito's band about clave.

Afro-Cuban jazz has been for most of its history a matter of superimposing jazz phrasing over Cuban rhythms.

The Cuban jazz-born drummer Dafnis Prieto in particular, has been a trailblazer in expanding the parameters of clave experimentation.

Cuban jazz taught Tito Puente, and Puente's arrangers learned from him.