• -Salsa is Mambo
• -The "original" dance (Mambo) was danced on the "2" by the Palladium
  dancers (everyone is selling dancing on the "2");
• -New York Latinos have been doing Mambo, Salsa, longer than everyone else. Therefore, they know how to dance it better, or in any case know more about it (one of the main dogmas of the Church of the "2");
• -Only people dancing on the "2" are with the Clave beat, with the music. All the other dancers just aren’t with the music;
• -This "2" is called the New York "2", the Cuban "2", the Street "2", etc., depending on the audience and the seller. Dancing on the "2" compliments the Tumbao which has an accent on the "2" (all sacred dogmas from the same bible stompers);

I’m going to try and catch this slippery cat by the tail. Let’s take a closer look at this original dance and the Palladium. Mike Bello in his "essay": "Mambo, Cuba created it, New York perfected it", takes the Mambo on a non- stop supersonic flight from Cuba to NYC. He, like every other "dance on 2" expert, decides to ignore the fact that the transculturalisation of Afro-Cuban music in the Caribbean Basin was in motion long before the Mambo made it to New York. Lets take a brief look at Mexico in relationship to this transculturalisation. For artists coming from the Spanish Caribbean, long before New York became a center of Latin music, Mexico was the Latin Hollywood. The goal of just about every band, singer, or musician from the area was to perform and be recorded there. In turn, many Mexicans took to this music
whole heartedly. One of the most famous singers of Sones, Boleros, etc. was the Mexican
known as Tona la Negra, whose popularity was superseded, perhaps, only by Celia Cruz. She was,
and still is, a legend. Agustin Lara, composer, arranger, and singer (also Mexican) was in high demand all over the Caribbean in the late 40’s and all throughout the 50’s. One of his most famous compositions is "La Clave y el Bongo alegran el Corazon". He was writing poems and music to the Claves before Manhattan knew how to eat with them. Before New York knew about the Mambo, Mario Moreno (Cantinflas) - also Mexican, was dancing it both seriously and comically. In reality by the time the Mambo made it to NYC, it was considered "zapato viejo" even in Cuba.

The Cuban Perez Prado, to whom some people attribute the creation of the Mambo, was well established for years in Mexico before the Mambo arrived in Manhattan. He was the darling of the upper classes, and the chic, not only in Mexico, but all over Latin America. In an interview, Tito Puente told Marla Friedler that he was the first one to put dancers on the stage; Perez Prado was doing that in Mexico almost 50 years ago!!!, probably with Mexican dancers. Many Mexicans took to the Son, the Danzon, the Mambo, etc. In fact, even today the Danzon is taught in the Ballrooms of Mexico. The movie simply titled "Danzon" gives a good picture of this phenomena.

I mention the Mexican ruling class and the chic, because to talk about Latin Music without referring to economic classes, demographics, race, age groups, and even political beliefs, is to be myopic. For example, Salsa music owes its origin to two Cuban music and dances: the Danzon which was the music of the rich and powerful, and the working class Son. The Danzon finds its origin in the French Contre Danse, which derives its name from the English Country Dance, which had become the dance of the French royal court and of the colonialists in Haiti. When the slaves rebelled and threw them out, many of these colonialists moved, not back to France, but to Santiago de Cuba. The Cuban rulers (Cuba was a Spanish colony at the time, and slavery was still flourishing there) took well to this "new" dance, and adopted it with enthusiasm. Eventually it evolved into the Danzon. Funny, that in a "proletarian" state as Cuba the National Dance is the dance of the ruling class; the Danzon. The Son, according to the Cuban musicologist Alejo Carpentier (and others) is from its beginnings working class. According to them it was brought to

Cuba by a "free black Dominican woman". Its history doesn’t seem to interest many people
today, perhaps because its tranculturalisation was due to the efforts of an obscure individual as
opposed to a social cataclysm, such as the slave trade, or the Haitian revolution. I mention this business about social classes, demographics, and race because to understand the popularity of Mambo in NYC, all these things have to be considered.

A few months ago, Mike Bello wrote a message on this board to "ANGRY, ENOJADA". In it he makes a statement which probably is the belief of many; this is what he told her, "also, realize that salsa began and was developed by, for the most part, Puerto Ricans in New York. They used the Afro-Cuban styles as a foundation and took off with them. So, naturally, New Yorkers have a longer history with salsa and mambo. Everywhere else, including South America, it was picked up much later and they developed their own styles. The same has happened in the west coast (L.A.)."

In reality, the Puerto Ricans who went for the Mambo were by and large born and raised, or raised, in the US. We are talking about the mid-50’s. They had to be the sons and daughters of the first waves of Puerto Rican immigrants to the US, before the great exodus of the 50’s, also known as Operation Bootstrap. Until that exodus from the Island, most Puerto Ricans in the US were of urban background, while those migrating during Operation Bootstrap were almost entirely of a rural background.

To talk about Puerto Ricans doing the Mambo is not as easy as it may seem. The fact is that in the mid 50’s you had a diversity of clubs catering to the different musical tastes of Puerto Ricans. Catering to the Mambo-oriented there was, practically, only one; the Palladium. At the other end of the spectrum, you had the Club Caborrojeno, and the Happy Hills Casino (to mention two) providing more typical Puerto Rican music, what many call (in a derogative manner) "Jibaro" music. The fact is that El Jibarito de Lares, Ramito, Cesar Concepcion, and a little bit later (late 50’s) Cortijo y su Combo were outselling the Mambo bands in NY. Yomo Toro had been a legend in that circuit (also derogatively known as the "cuchifrito circuit’) long before he played with the Fania All Stars. For Puerto Ricans not born in the US but of an urban background, Mambo was also not the thing; for them it was the music of Bobby Capo, Mirta Silva, Daniel Santos (the last two, both Puerto Ricans, were at points in their careers leadsingers for the Cuban Musical legend, La Sonora Matancera, in fact Celia Cruz was a replacement for Mirta Silva), Arsenio Rodriguez, etc., etc., etc.

Mambo’s popularity and longevity has been blown out of proportion, for commercial reasons. It has been taken out of context since the book and the movie, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love", and gave high hopes, to some dinosaurs, of a Mambo comeback. The Mambo’s Golden Age lasted at the most 5 years - from 1955 to circa 1960. That is really nothing compared with the decades after decades of dancing to Latin Music. The Fania All Stars (nobody was talking about Mambo during their time) were on a roll for almost 10 years. The Mambo was only one of the musical expressions attracting NY born Latinos, yes mainly NY Puerto Ricans, or NuYorkricans. For those Latinos, the musical innovations of people like Chano Pozo, Mario Bauza, and Chico O’Farril, to mention a few, provided an outlet to express their biculturality.

Those great Cuban musicians came to the United States to learn Jazz. The best example of them is the late Mario Bauza who became a Jazz master as a musician, composer, and arranger. One could disagree with his contention that he was the "inventor of Latin Jazz", but he was certainly a pioneer of the gender. In any case, New York born Latinos could relate to this fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms and Jazz; they could culturally identify with both idioms. The Mambo in NY was able to take elements of Jazz, and became, perhaps, the first ever Latin Pop Musical expression with cross-over possibilities; it was also taken up by other New Yorkers, mainly by the up and coming Jewish middle class, but also by Italians, Irish, and Afro Americans.

One of the main characteristics of the New York Mambo was its lyrical simplicity, and many times its total lack of any lyrics. That is one of the reasons why it was never popular in Latin America. The main thing for Mambo lovers in NY was the instrumentation, the solos, the virtuosity of the musicians and arrangers. Some of those Mambos are classic pieces, in every sense of the word. It was a time of experimentation without the taboo’s which usually accompany village life. This was New York, and the sky was the limit, they went for it. Speaking of demographics, race, and economics, the end of the Mambo Era coincides with the flight of the white ethnic middle class from Manhattan to suburbia. In reality, during the dying days of the Mambo rage, if you wanted to dance Mambo you were better off going to the Catskill Mountains, which had become an almost all-Jewish "enclave" and resort area.

Back to the Palladium. In his essay "Is it Mambo or Salsa? Only the Clave Knows" Mike Bello claims to have been at the Palladium. He is not really lying; he is telling a half truth, and that is the problem in dealing with this "slippery cat", they don’t really lie; they just tell you the part of the truth that fits their purpose. Of course Mike Bello probably went to the Palladium which opened in the 80’s on East 14th Street as a normal North American Disco, and as time went by introduced Salsa Nights (not Mambo nights, by the way) on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, I really don’t remember. But Mr. Bello was never at the Palladium of Mambo-fame; the one I’m going to describe. Not even Eddie Torres has ever claimed to have been there. And anyone trying to tell you that in those days the drinking laws were more relaxed, or that the bouncers at the doors would turn a blind eye if one was under age, is simply lying or living a fantasy; they were very strict, and in the early 60’s the Palladium had to be very careful, because the Police Department was keeping an eye on the joint looking for any excuse to close it down. The Palladium was for a very specific group of people.

The average Latino was not going there. It was show time at the Palladium; battle of the bands, battle of the dancers, and eventually battle of the bouncers. It had very little to offer to the average Pedro y Juana. They were, and still are, reluctant to spend their hard earned pesos to stand on the sideline listening to virtuoso solos, which seem to go on for ever, or watching super dancers take over the dance floor. They appreciate both things, but only to a certain point; what they really want to do, above all, is to dance themselves. So they were simply going to other clubs, and left the Palladium to the "hip crowd". The problem with that was that when the middle class fled to suburbia in the early 60’s, slowly the crowds at the Palladium started to get smaller. Then the famous and the curio seekers also started to disappear. There were nights at the Palladium when the only people present were the mafiosi (and their bouncers), the musicians and their friends, and the great dancers all looking at each other wondering what was going on. Good bands were not so willing to play there anymore. The Mafia running the joint grew restless and aggressive.

Today’s newcomer to Salsa is aware of Tito Puente, EL REY DEL MAMBO, there was another Tito who also was one of the big legends from the Palladium. His name was Tito Rodriguez. Legend has it that T. Rodriguez started to play more uptown then downtown; that he also had his eyes set on the Latin American market; that he saw the Mambo thing coming to an end. He felt comfortable playing anywhere. He was confronted at the Palladium about his lack of desire to continue to play there; confronted by the Mafia running the joint, legend has it that he told them off. What is not a legend is that they beat him up right there and then, in the Holiest of places of today’s Mambo Bible stompers; in the Mambo shrine: the Palladium. Very quickly after that, the Palladium went from Le Grand Fricase of Latin Music, to Fracas after Fracas, to El Gran Fracaso. Oh, they tried to revive it. They finally realized that what was making people jump was that new sound of Cortijo y su Combo with Ismael Rivera on vocals. Yeah, they tried to get people back at the Palladium with that Jibaro sounding Combo; they tried to attract the Charanga and Pachanga crowd. They really tried everything. It was too late. Tito Rodriguez had said after the incident that he would never again set foot in the Palladium and his fans (which were many) followed suit. It was bye bye Palladium. The Mambo became poor and homeless. It was really the end of it. It has never made a comeback. It became a museum piece to be found only in the dance studios of the Ballroom teachers.

Was everyone dancing on the "2" at the Palladium? If you look at film footage from those glorious days, and you really know how to count to the music, you see that people were dancing on different counts, mainly on what today is called the 2, and on the 3. You don’t have to take my word for it. Mr. Luis Flores, aka Luis Maquina or La Maquina was interviewed by Marla Friedler. He is one of the celebrated great dancers from the Palladium days. She asked him: "Did you dance on the 2?" His answer: "don’t talk that shit to me, the 2, the 1. I danced on the clave." Something like that. Go ahead and go to the features section of Salsaweb. Look it up. What he meant by that could be a lot of things. For the time being I leave it there.

So far, we know the following: Mambo was "developed" in Cuba in the 40’s before arriving in New York it was in Mexico. Here we have to add that by no means was Mambo ever the sweeping rage, neither in Cuba, nor in Mexico, nor in New York. Mambo always had to share the stage with other music. If you buy the CD’s Dancemania vol 1&2, you will see that in those days even Mr. Puente didn’t call everything Mambo. In the old days it was customary to call a song by its name. In these two CD’s you have Son Montunos, Mambos, ChaChaCha’s, Boleros, Guajiras, Son-ChaChaCha, Bolero-Son, etc. It is important to note this, because almost all the numbers in these compilations were recorded during the heyday of the Mambo. Today, Mr Puente says that it is all Mambo to him. I suits him well.

What about Cuba? What was going on there in the 50’s? By all accounts, they were not dancing Mambo. In fact they were developing what we know today as the Casino style together with its Rueda part. Were the Cubans dancing to the Ran Kan Kan or to Mambo Diablo? No. Some of them were swinging to the music of Benny More, some to the new Charangas, some to the music of Arsenio Rodriguez, some others to the Sonora Matancera, some were still crazy about the ChaChaCha, some were into the old Son and some to the Danzon; like I said before, region, race, economics, and (before I forget) age group, sometimes determines what or how people are going to dance. What I can guarantee you is that there was no Mambo on "2"club…never will be. Only fools and horses go for that.

One may think that the Cubans were sending someone every week to learn to dance at the Palladium, rush back to Cuba and teach the whole Island the new style. Cuban chauvinists say it was the opposite. They claim that the New York Style is a bastardisation of the Casino style. Everybody can play the same game. I mentioned before that at the Palladium not everyone danced on the same count. New York has always been like that. Depending on what club you go to, what night of the week, what band is playing, the clubs location, etc. - you will encounter different crowds. Sometimes there is a band that attracts people from different dancing styles to the same location.

In general they fall into two categories, by modern definition, "two dancers" and "three dancers". You don’t have to take my word for it. I refer you again to the features section of this magazine and read a report from Marla Friedler (again!) of one of her trips to NYC. She says: "In New York nobody dances on the "One"; they dance on the "Two", or the "Three". She goes on to call "Two Dancers" "trained dancers" and "Three Dancers" "untrained dancers". Yeah, someone taking dance lessons is a "trained dancer"; the people dancing for many years without lessons (dancing to just about anything being played), listening to the music all their lives, people who dance not just in the nightclubs, but also whenever a social occasion (birthday parties, baptismals, dia de santo, having a party for the hell of it, etc.) brings family and friends together; yeah, those are "untrained dancers"… I think she has it upside down. In any case, I prefer to call "untrained dancers", to any count, "cultural dancers"; they dance because it is in their culture.

There is a third group of New York dancers, I grant you that it is a dying breed, but it is still there. It is what I can only call "cultural Two dancers". These are remnants of past explosions in the music’s popularity when people simply learn to dance on the dance floor; in their homes with their friends; watching others; stepping on each others feet; going for it. The last such explosion took place in the early 70’s. There was a club called the Cheetah were the New York Latin youth was introduced by the thousands to Salsa by the Fania All Stars. People just got into it and learned to dance, without going to lessons. Many people learned to dance like that, some of them on the "2", some on the "3", and others (fewer) both ways. In any case, in New York, if you really want to mingle you have to make some adjustments. Somebody has to. It is usually the man who has to adjust to the lady. Or you tell the lady that you really would like to dance with her, but that you dance different and find it difficcult, or impossible, to adjust. She will probably give it a try at adjusting to the leading man’s ways.

That is the way it is in New York. Once you dance outside the few places where the dance studio crowd hangs out, you are on your own; you enter the real world of social interaction; no more "lets practice the CBL with the triple combo with side kick and double time shuffle". Or the "the double underarm sniff con tres vueltas en un pie" It is "Social Basics Level One". Was Mambo "the original dance"? Is there anything preceding the Mambo that we can associate Salsa with?

Did people in Latin America, or to be more specific, from the Afro/Spanish Caribbean, dance anything similar to Salsa? Man, the list is so long that I really don’t know where to start. There was of course the Son, the Danzon, the Guaracha, the Son Montuno, the ChaChaCha, the Guarapachanga, the Charanga, the Bolero, the Cumbia, there was also an array of 6/8 rhythms and dances such as the Mangulina, the Colombian Merengue, the Joropo. I mention these 6/8 dances because they were executed much the same way as Salsa. One of the more popular groups throughout the Caribbean Basin was, without questions, La Sonora Matancera. They catered mainly to the musical tastes of the people of the Caribbean Basin. Their menu was incredibly varied, and their lead singers, as well as other musicians, while coming mainly from Cuba, were also from other parts of the Caribbean; as I mentioned before, from Puerto Rico, from the Dominican Republic (Alberto Beltran), from Venezuela (Bienvenido Granda). Their style and even their concept (the name Sonora refers to a musical ensemble playing Son based music) was emulated by others in the Caribbean. The "taste" for Salsa among Latinos predates the Mambo.

Then you had the groups that played mainly Son Montunos. The main one was that of Arsenio Rodriguez. I will stay with this one for here you will find what many Cubans say today’s Salsa is; I disagree with them. To believe that today’s Salsa is Son, or Son Montuno, or Mambo will be to deny that the Music evolves. To deny the evolution of Latin music, one has to do a lot of oversimplifications; it is equal to killing a living thing, and Salsa is a living organism. In any case, the contributions of Arsenio Rodriguez, to the evolution of Latin Music are many; he took the small Son format and expanded it; he expanded the rhythm section to include "Congas", and Pailas (similar to the Timbales); he started to write music which was more urban in nature, and today’s Conjuntos are an inheritance of his creativity; en fin, he was setting the standards for Latin popular dance music. All you have to do is buy some of his music, or records others have made in tribute to his work; listen to them. After you have done that go and buy some Mambo records; listen to them. After that, compare them to your collection of today’s

Salsa and decide for yourself what sounds more like today’s Salsa. I can’t resist the temptation to tell you that, as far as I know, you won’t find a Mambo in Arsenio’s repertoire.  Ah, the "Congas" and the Tumbao. It is one of the dogmas of the Church of The Land of the Holy Two: "dancing on the 2 is also the proper way to "execute" the dance because this step pattern compliments the "slap" of the Tumbao rythmic pattern which falls on the 2, it is the accent of the Tumbao". This is a real gem, for it reveals why some Cubans call "dancing on the "2" New York Style", dancing upside down (feeling wise). Anyway, lets take a closer look into this. The Tumbao, in proper Spanish Tumbado, is a rythmic pattern which derives its name from the percussion instrument on which it is played: the Tumbadora drums, better known, outside of Cuba, as Conga drums. In Cuba, there is not one single drum called Conga. There is a Carnaval music and dance called the Conga. The rythmic patterns for this Carnaval music are played on drums similar to the Tumbadoras. Outside visitors to Cuba during the Carnaval festivities simply started to call any drum resembling a Tumbadora "a Conga drum", or a "Conga". Later, the Cohen brothers (Latin Percussion) decided to market the drums using the more appealing, simpler, and exotic name of Congas. They were extremely successful and the rest is history: in Cuba Tumbadoras, and outside of Cuba Congas.

The drums of the Tumbadora family (there are 3, Tumbadora, Tres Golpes, and Quinto) are truly an Afro-Cuban invention in Cuba, not in Africa. The root of their name is to be found not in the African language of their forefathers, but in the Spanish language. These drums were created to play a truly Afro-Cuban music: the Rumbas. So, what is in a name? Most of the time a nice story; sometimes the truth about something. The name Tumbadora is given to these drums quite simple because they go, "tum", or "tum-tum", or "tum-tum-tum", ad naseum. The English translation is "toom", etc. These sounds are also called "open tones". So, what is a Tumbao? By definition a rythmic pattern played on the Tumbadora(s); the main characteristic of a Tumbao would be having one or more TUMs, or open tones, in its pattern.

There are Tumbaos for many different rhythms. In Salsa, you can’t escape those TumTums. They are all pervasive even when the Tumbao is played with only one drum. Today’s Salsa’s Tumbao is played with at least 2 drums. The open tones of Salsa Tumbao played with one drum fall on the 4 and on the beat between the 4 and the 1. There it gives a constant accent to the music and it also helps to develop what I call the "overlapping feeling of Salsa, or Latin Music" from one frame to the next. If anybody wants to look for a constant clear accent in Salsa, or whatever you prefer to call it, it is there, on that TumTum; it is constant, and loud and clear; no need for special "ear-trainning tapes". But the ‘dosmatics" want you to believe that the accent is on the 2. For this purpose they make use of something no one can hear, the "slap" of the Tumbao, which, when it is there, falls on the 2. In Spanish the name for this "slap" is "golpe seco". By the laws of physics, it is the type of sound that doesn’t travel far and in the face of competition it simply gets drowned out. It is neither high pitched nor with a heavy bass. In any event by the law of addition and substraction, if you take the "slap" out of the Tumbao, you still have a Tumbao. If you take the TumTum out and leave the slap, you are playing nothing and the other musicians in the band will look in your direction with a question mark painted on their faces. The "slap" is really insignificant to the Tumbao.

It is on the accented 4 of the music that we are to find the reason why people who learn to dance in the dance studios of New York dance on "the 2". If one has to look for an "original music and dance" to which today’s music and dance can be associated with, then Mambo is not it. One has to go beyond that. I think the place to start with is with the old Son, which was danced in two different ways depending on where the dancers came from: one group, mainly the Cubans ( I’m taking liberties here, because Cuban "Guajiros"; peasants-farmers, didn’t dance the same way as, say, urban blacks, and I refer you to the book "Cuban Counterpoint: Sugar Cane and Tobacco" by the Cuban Musicologist Fernando Ortiz) started with a step on the accented 4, with a pause or a riding motion on the one, stepping on the 2 and finishing with another step on the 3, to begin stepping again on the accented 4. The other group (and they came from many places) danced almost the same way, except that instead of beginning to dance on the 4, they started on the 1, with a pause or riding motion on the two, etc. I think Mr. Flores, aka La Maquina, belonged to one of these two groups. For both groups, the first step was the protocol step, in other words the leader didn’t start immediately with a 3-step gallop, or trot, in one direction or the other with the assumption that the person at the other end of the line "knew" what was coming. It also had to do with the idea of easing into a dance in accordance to the structure of the music.

When the Son Montuno came along the old ways of dancing didn’t change, even though the music was beginning to evolve, with the Tumbao, into having more of an overlapping feeling than the Son did. The accented 4 in the Son was done with only one golpe (TUM) on the Bongo drum. There were no Congas nor Timbales in the old Son. In any event, when the Mambo arrived in Manhattan the first people to dance it were those Latinos dancing to other music the way I just described above. By the simplistic definition of the dance studios, the first group would today be called "Two Dancers", and the second "Three Dancers". In any case, the Mambo caught on and this "new" dance had to be taught to a new public. Who was going to teach non-Latinos and even second generation Latinos how to do the Mambo? By all accounts, at that time there were no Latino Dance teachers in NYC. So Westerners teaching Ballroom dances were called to service. Since everything Cuban was "in", or perhaps for practical reasons, they took the "Cuban" step sequence I described above to teach the newcomers. To them it was, and still is, inconceivable that a dance could have a step sequence beginning in one frame and ending in the next, such as the step sequence for the Son. Much more inconceivable for them to have the accent of the music to be on the 4. For the western dance teacher, at least in those days the 3 step dance sequence had to fit into the 1234 "box".

In a way they were lucky, because once two of those old fashion "Cuban" dancers got over the "protocol" step, to the well trained eye of the Ballroom teacher, who was totally unfamiliar with the feeling of Latin music, those dancers looked like they were dancing 234 etc. And so, they started to teach the Mambo on the 2. Their "luck" also turned out to be their misfortune, for ever since then they have had to come up with all kinds of senseless explanations for this non-existent accent on the 2, as well as dirty tricks to make their students "feel" the accent. They should have changed the Tumbao, switch the slap and the TumTum around. Luckily, that was beyond their powers. The rubbish placed around the "House of the Two", to protect it, is threatening to fall on top of it. According to dancers of The New York 2, you do a step on the one, and "break"on the 2. I don’t know of any 2 dancer in New York stepping on the 1.

In a future article I plan to include my views about Eddie Torres’ teaching and his video. Also, an explanation as to why the Clave beat is for everyone. Finally,

I will like to raise the question: "Do people really dance to one particular beat on the music

(like horses), or is there something more human involved which can help to explain the diversity of ways in which people dance Salsa?"