Orestes Lopez and the mambo

Latin Beat Magazine, Sept, 2002 by Max Salazar

In late 1949, Pérez Prado's recording of Mambo #5 started a new trend that constantly grew in popularity. By 1954, the mambo craze was read about in Europe, Asia, Africa and Caribbean countries via newspapers and magazines. North Americans learned about it by reading music magazines such as Downbeat and Metronome, and popular national magazines such as Life, Look, Time and Ebony. Never before had a danceable rhythm caused so much attention and discussion. The mambo was the dancer's rage. Thousands of people joined dance studios for mambo instruction. Mambo recordings became financially fruitful and the word "mambo" was utilized by North American pop vocalists to sell their recordings. The mambo's worldwide impact was the reason why three Cuban musicians--Pérez Prado, Arsenio Rodríguez and Orestes López--gave testimony to scores of journalists for years thereafter. All three musicians have been dead for years, yet the controversy "Who Invented the Mambo?" lingers. Latin Beat Magazine's October and November 1992 issues shed light on the creation of the mambo with irrefutable documentary evidence. I have marshaled more information from the documented investigations of respected Cuban music historians Odilio Urfé, Leonardo Acosta, Maria Teresa Linares, Erena Hernández and Helio Orovio.

In 1974, the Institute of Cuban Literature (located in Havana, Cuba) published Dr. Maria Teresa Linares' book "La Música y El Pueblo."

In the chapter "Mambo y Cha Cha Chá," (page 159), she wrote, "Orestes López was born in Havana, on August 29, 1908. As a pre-teenager he studied piano, cello, violin and the five-key ebony flute. In 1924, at age 16, he was playing cello with maestro Pedro San Juan's Philharmonic Orchestra. A few years later, he was playing bass for Miguel "El Moro" Vásquez's charanga. In the '30s he was the musical director of three dance orchestras--López-Barroso, Orestes López and La Unión--before joining Antonio Arcaño y Sus Maravillas in 1937. López, a multi-instrumentalist, composed and orchestrated danzones, most notably Camina Juan Pescao, El Truco de Regatillo, Los Jóvenes De La Defensa and El Moro Eléctrico, among many others. For over 20 years he performed for Arcaño y Sus Maravillas on bass, cello and piano. In 1938, he composed and arranged Mambo. It launched a new style of danzón. Subsequently, the syncopated bass in the tune gave rise on the one hand to the dance genre known as mambo created by Pérez Prado, and on the other to the chachachá created by Enrique Jorrín.

"In the late '30s, the danzón had three movements: First, the introduction; second, el paseo, the walk in a circle; and third, la comparsa, the main theme in which dancers faced each other and danced. López's danzón de nuevo ritmo changed the third movement when he substituted a montuno (based on the syncopated beat of the son-playing treseros from Oriente). López's montuno of two to four beats took on a special syncopated character and was given the generic name of mambo."

On page 195 of her book, Linares lists in chronological sequence every important Cuban music event from 1509 to 1973. The only mention of the mambo appears on page 199, where she wrote, "1938--se da a conocer el primer danzón de nuevo ritmo titulado `Mambo' por la orquesta de Arcaño y Sus Maravillas. (1938--Arcaño y Sus Maravillas introduced the first danzón de nuevo ritmo which was titled Mambo.)"

Leonardo Acosta, former tenor saxophonist for a few of Cuba's most popular big bands, music historian and journalist, has written several books regarding Cuban music history. His most recent work, "Descarga Cubana, El Jazz en Cuba, 1900-1950," was published in 2000. On page 38 of his book "From the Drum to the Synthesizer" (1987), there is a chapter in which there is an interview of Orestes López in 1976, published by the magazine Revolución y Cultura. Acosta is quoted as saying, "The history of any form of art shows that no creator, regardless of how brilliant and experimental, creates from nothing ... there has always been antecedents (a foundation and idea) and influences of a more or less direct nature. Pérez Prado never gave a clue of the inspiration for his creation of the mambo. Years later, Odilio Urfé, a revered Cuban music historian, mentioned during a lecture that Antonio Arcaño told him that even before 1938, López repeated the phrase `mambo' a great number of times whenever he needed to repeat a chorus ... dancers were already saying `Let's mambo,' then in 1938 he composed Danzón Mambo."

Acosta continued, "So the mambo is not the product of a single individual's invention, but is derived from a process within Cuban music involving a number of creators and interpreters, although there are a few who at any given moment stand at the core of the process. A very important figure is Orestes López, who remained in oblivion for a time, although revolutionary Cuba would later pay him deserved tribute."

Before the interview ended, López said to Acosta, "My danzón-mambo was written in 1937 ... presented in 1938 in a performance by Arcaño's orchestra at the Mil Diez radio station."