Machito (Frank Grillo, 1909-1984) was a singer and maracas player who grew up in Havana, among the soneros of the 1920s, and came to New York in 1937.
In 1940 he founded Machito and his Afro-Cubans with his brother-in-law Mario Bauzá, a trumpeter from Chick Webb's band, as musical director. Bauzá wrote Tanga in 1943, and with it the orchestra laid Cuban rhythm, the clave, the congas and the bongó, under big-band jazz harmony: Afro-Cuban jazz. His sister Graciela joined as the band's singer.
They recorded with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, played Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite, and through the 1950s ruled the Palladium Ballroom on Broadway, the home of the mambo, alongside Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez. He won a Grammy in 1983 and was still on the road when he died in London, a year later.
This was a new concept in interpreting Cuban music with as much (harmonic) richness as possible. It made every other band that came after, followers.
Chico O’FarrillNotes from the Mambo Inn: The Story of Mario Bauzá, PBS, 1998
Living and playing with Mario, I found out that despite the language differences, Afro-Americans and Cubans were not destined to be total strangers, musically.
Dizzy GillespieTo Be or Not to Bop, 1979
The marriage of Cuban music with jazz was not a conventional union. It was a marriage of love.
Machitoquoted in Paul Austerlitz, Jazz Consciousness, 2005
Projects
The Afro-Cubans
Trumpets and saxophones, piano and bass, and a rhythm section of conga, bongó and timbales, with Mario Bauzá writing the arrangements and leading the band.
Weddings, galas, festivals and dance nights, with the full big band or a septet. Tell us the date, the room and how many dancers, and we answer within two days.
