bailar y tocar
Son Montuno
THE MAMBO IS BACK, 40 YEARS LATER
Published: May 12, 1991
Every Thursday evening, at a time most people are heading home from work, the dance floor at Club El Morocco on East 54th Street in Manhattan is elbow to elbow in men and women trying to mambo.
The group is as diverse as a rush-hour subway crowd. They range in age from their early 20's to their late 50's and in styles from Ralph Kramden to Ralph Lauren. But here, they are all the same: rank beginners sweating and giggling their way through fancy syncopated steps, complicated dips and twirls and a deceptively easy-looking hip swivel.
"I couldn't care if I never get the steps," said Naomi Saunders, who works in a Manhattan office and remembers the mambo from its heyday more than 30 years ago. "It's fun."
Once everyone wanted to mambo. In the 1950's, the mambo was the most popular dance craze in the Western world. Mambo dancers became famous, and the New York Palladium, a showcase for mambo music, gained international attention. Afro-Cuban band leaders like Damaso Perez Prado, who died in 1989, and Mario Bauza, now 80 years old, became legendary. Now the mambo, seldom seen outside Latin nightclubs since the early 1960's, is sashaying back into the mainstream.
Lessons are being offered everywhere from nightclubs to school gyms, taught to the beat of the Cuban carnival music that combines Spanish ballroom melodies with African street rhythms. A movie called "The Mambo Kings," based on Oscar Hijuelos's 1990 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," is in production in Hollywood. "Mongo Mambo," a book celebrating Afro-Cuban and Latin American musicians, by the photographer Adal Maldonado, has just been published. Influence of Immigrants
Mr. Maldonado, 42, traces the revival to the increased immigrant population in New York from Latin America and the Caribbean.
"There is a focus on Hispanics now," he said, "and when you look at the culture, music is what people see because it is universal."
"The mambo is also part of the American psyche," he said, "along with the 'I Love Lucy' show and Ricky Ricardo. There's a renewed interest in that."
To Julio Sabater and Freddie Rios, former Palladium dancers who are rehearsing a new act as "The Palladium Mambo Legend Dancers," the mambo fits in with the home and hearth emphasis of the 90's. They added that the mambo's sophistication has a broader appeal than salsa, its later, sexier variation that remains popular among Hispanic Americans.
"The kind of dancing where the people dance one mile away from one another and act like barbarians is dying," said Mr. Sabater, who says he is in his "early 60's." "Young people are beginning to see other people dance a more intimate, pretty way and are becoming interested in learning what their parents used to do."
Mr. Rios, 57, thinks the mambo has returned partly because it is exciting. "It's more energetic than other dancing," he said.
Mr. Sabater is the president of the Palladium Mambo Dancers Association, an organization he started about six months ago to "promote Afro-Cuban and Latin American culture," especially the mambo.
"If you could see what it was like in the Palladium," said Mr. Sabater, a world-class runner in Puerto Rico before he started dancing at the Palladium in 1954. "The scene was like some kind of sporting match, with people cheering and shouting from the sides. And if you see Freddie Rios and me dance together, you realize the beauty of intricate steps."
The Style
Intricate. Involved. Complex.
These are not words to gladden the hearts of the less than sure of foot. The mambo requires as much skill as energy. More fluid than the cha-cha and faster than the rumba, the mambo requires an ear for a syncopated count.
Even those who master the dance find it difficult to describe the moves, which have dozens of variations, many of them born on the streets and not in the studio.
Here's what the Encyclopedia Brittanica has to say: "In dancing the mambo, a step is taken on the fourth beat and held through the first beat, followed by a break (stepping forward, backward or sideward) on the second beat and stepping in place on the third beat."
But Eddie Torres, who teaches beginners at various locations around the city, says anyone can learn the basic mambo. "It's like everything else," he said, words that are a reassuring refrain to the beginners at Club El Morocco. "It's only hard until you learn it."
Correction: May 18, 1991, Saturday
Because of a transcription error, an article last Sunday about the mambo misidentified a new book about the dance. It is "Mango Mambo," by Adal Maldonado.
Published: May 12, 1991
Every Thursday evening, at a time most people are heading home from work, the dance floor at Club El Morocco on East 54th Street in Manhattan is elbow to elbow in men and women trying to mambo.
The group is as diverse as a rush-hour subway crowd. They range in age from their early 20's to their late 50's and in styles from Ralph Kramden to Ralph Lauren. But here, they are all the same: rank beginners sweating and giggling their way through fancy syncopated steps, complicated dips and twirls and a deceptively easy-looking hip swivel.
"I couldn't care if I never get the steps," said Naomi Saunders, who works in a Manhattan office and remembers the mambo from its heyday more than 30 years ago. "It's fun."
Once everyone wanted to mambo. In the 1950's, the mambo was the most popular dance craze in the Western world. Mambo dancers became famous, and the New York Palladium, a showcase for mambo music, gained international attention. Afro-Cuban band leaders like Damaso Perez Prado, who died in 1989, and Mario Bauza, now 80 years old, became legendary. Now the mambo, seldom seen outside Latin nightclubs since the early 1960's, is sashaying back into the mainstream.
Lessons are being offered everywhere from nightclubs to school gyms, taught to the beat of the Cuban carnival music that combines Spanish ballroom melodies with African street rhythms. A movie called "The Mambo Kings," based on Oscar Hijuelos's 1990 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," is in production in Hollywood. "Mongo Mambo," a book celebrating Afro-Cuban and Latin American musicians, by the photographer Adal Maldonado, has just been published. Influence of Immigrants
Mr. Maldonado, 42, traces the revival to the increased immigrant population in New York from Latin America and the Caribbean.
"There is a focus on Hispanics now," he said, "and when you look at the culture, music is what people see because it is universal."
"The mambo is also part of the American psyche," he said, "along with the 'I Love Lucy' show and Ricky Ricardo. There's a renewed interest in that."
To Julio Sabater and Freddie Rios, former Palladium dancers who are rehearsing a new act as "The Palladium Mambo Legend Dancers," the mambo fits in with the home and hearth emphasis of the 90's. They added that the mambo's sophistication has a broader appeal than salsa, its later, sexier variation that remains popular among Hispanic Americans.
"The kind of dancing where the people dance one mile away from one another and act like barbarians is dying," said Mr. Sabater, who says he is in his "early 60's." "Young people are beginning to see other people dance a more intimate, pretty way and are becoming interested in learning what their parents used to do."
Mr. Rios, 57, thinks the mambo has returned partly because it is exciting. "It's more energetic than other dancing," he said.
Mr. Sabater is the president of the Palladium Mambo Dancers Association, an organization he started about six months ago to "promote Afro-Cuban and Latin American culture," especially the mambo.
"If you could see what it was like in the Palladium," said Mr. Sabater, a world-class runner in Puerto Rico before he started dancing at the Palladium in 1954. "The scene was like some kind of sporting match, with people cheering and shouting from the sides. And if you see Freddie Rios and me dance together, you realize the beauty of intricate steps."
The Style
Intricate. Involved. Complex.
These are not words to gladden the hearts of the less than sure of foot. The mambo requires as much skill as energy. More fluid than the cha-cha and faster than the rumba, the mambo requires an ear for a syncopated count.
Even those who master the dance find it difficult to describe the moves, which have dozens of variations, many of them born on the streets and not in the studio.
Here's what the Encyclopedia Brittanica has to say: "In dancing the mambo, a step is taken on the fourth beat and held through the first beat, followed by a break (stepping forward, backward or sideward) on the second beat and stepping in place on the third beat."
But Eddie Torres, who teaches beginners at various locations around the city, says anyone can learn the basic mambo. "It's like everything else," he said, words that are a reassuring refrain to the beginners at Club El Morocco. "It's only hard until you learn it."
Correction: May 18, 1991, Saturday
Because of a transcription error, an article last Sunday about the mambo misidentified a new book about the dance. It is "Mango Mambo," by Adal Maldonado.
