Rumba Blues 1953-57 How Latin Music Changed R&B: The Mambo Years

Latin rhythms have infiltrated into every new branch of popular music that has emerged during the twentieth century. Jelly Roll Morton and W.C. Handy incorporated the Cuban habanera into early jazz and blues; the Argentinean tango found its way into twenties dance-band music; the Brazilian baion and bossanova styles wound their way through the sixties beat boom and were revived in the drum?n?bass of the nineties. But none had such an all-pervasive influence as the rumba. Its journey from the Middle-East through North Africa and Spain to the New World brought it into American dance halls in the thirties. The syncopated, rhythmic riffs of bandleaders such as Xavier Cugat helped to liberate dancers from stuffy foxtrots and waltzes, opening up an altogether more sensual world of excitement and exoticism. In post-war popular music, rumba is everywhere, from Dave Bartholomew?s Country Boy to the Clash?s Rock The Casbah, picking up Little Richard?s Slippin? and Slidin? and the Beatles? Ballad Of John And Yoko along the way. Even hillbilly records featured rumba bass lines. Its 3-2 clave rhythm, which Bo Diddley stylised and made into his very own, became an integral part of American music and continues to cast its spell over popular music to the current day.