"Manteca" is one of the earliest foundational tunes of Afro-Cuban jazz. Co-written by Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller in 1947, it is among the most famous of Gillespie's recordings (along with the earlier "A Night in Tunisia") and is "one of the most important records ever made in the United States", according to Gary Giddins of The Village Voice . [1] "Manteca" is the first tune rhythmically based on the clave to become a jazz standard.
In 1947, Gillespie asked Mario Bauzá to recommend a Cuban percussionist for his big band. Bauzá suggested Pozo, a rough-living percussionist already famous in Cuba, and Gillespie hired him. They began to work Pozo's Cuban-style percussion into the band's arrangements. [2]
The band was touring in California when Pozo presented Gillespie with the idea for the tune. It featured a bridge of two eight-bar trumpet statements by Gillespie, percussion patterns played by Pozo, and horn lines from Gillespie's big band arranger Walter "Gil" Fuller. [1] According to Gillespie, Pozo composed the layered, contrapuntal guajeos (Afro-Cuban ostinatos) of the A section and the introduction, while Gillespie wrote the bridge. Gillespie recounted: "If I'd let it go like [Pozo] wanted it, it would have been strictly Afro-Cuban all the way. There wouldn't have been a bridge. I thought I was writing an eight-bar bridge, but after eight bars I hadn't resolved back to B-flat, so I had to keep going and ended up writing a sixteen-bar bridge." [3]
The rhythm of the 'A' section melody is identical to a common mambo bell pattern:
Early performances of "Manteca" reveal that despite their enthusiasm for collaborating, Gillespie and Pozo were not very familiar with each other's music. The members of Gillespie's band were unaccustomed to guajeos, overly swinging and accenting them in an atypical fashion. Thomas Owens observes: "Once the theme ends and the improvisation begins... Gillespie and the full band continue the bebop mood, using swing eighths in spite of Pozo's continuing even eighths, until the final A section of the theme returns. Complete assimilation of Afro-Cuban rhythms and improvisations on a harmonic ostinato was still a few years away for the beboppers in 1947." [4]
"Manteca" was first performed by the big band at Carnegie Hall on September 29, 1947; it was very well received. The big band recorded the tune on December 22, 1947, and in early 1948 they toured Europe for a few months, without including the piece in their set list. Instead, they featured the two-part tune "Cubana-Be/Cubana-Bop", recorded eight days before "Manteca", as their nod to Afro-Cuban jazz. [1] [5] Resuming touring in the Spring 1948, the band replaced "Cubana-Be/Cubana-Bop" with "Manteca" in their set list, augmented with Pozo's abakuá chants; audiences and critics responded strongly. The New Yorker and Life both printed pictorials and reviews of the band. Life wrote that Pozo was a "frenzied drummer", "shouting incoherently" in apparent "bop transport". [5] DownBeat said in September 1948 that "Manteca" was performed "almost as a tribal rite", making a primitive statement. [5] On October 9, 1948, the song was recorded as part of a show at the Royal Roost in New York. Gillespie responded to the crowd's amusement at Pozo's chanting by mimicking Pozo's chants himself, evoking laughter from the audience. This type of clowning was common to Gillespie's stage presence but it was in contrast to his serious effort to incorporate Afro-Cuban elements into jazz. [5] On this recording, someone is heard playing the 3-2 son clave pattern on claves throughout a good portion of this 2–3 song. [6] This recording is the last one Pozo made of "Manteca"; he was shot and killed in a Harlem bar two months later. [7]
The Spanish word manteca (lard) is an Afro-Cuban slang term for heroin. [8] Because mainstream jazz audiences are generally not aware of the innovations of Machito's band, "Manteca" is often erroneously cited as the first authentic Latin jazz (or Afro-Cuban jazz) tune. Although "Tanga" preceded "Manteca" by several years, the former is a modal descarga (Cuban jam), lacking a typical jazz bridge, or B section, and is not well known enough to be considered a jazz standard. [9] When Gillespie first began experimenting with Afro-Cuban rhythms, the bebop pioneer called the subgenre cu-bop.
The piece refers to racial tensions in America; Gillespie is heard singing, "I'll never go back to Georgia". In 1965, the Joe Cuba Sextet got their first crossover hit with the Latin and soul fusion of "El Pito (I'll Never Go Back to Georgia)". The "Never Go Back To Georgia" chant was taken from Dizzy Gillespie's introduction to this seminal Afro-Cuban tune, "Manteca". [10] [11]
In 1961, blues guitarist Bobby Parker had a Billboard Hot 100 hit with the song "Watch Your Step", which he wrote based on "Manteca". Parker said "I started playing the riff on my guitar and decided to make a blues out of it." Parker's song was performed on stage by the Beatles in 1961 and 1962, and, according to John Lennon, provided a musical basis for both "I Feel Fine" and "Day Tripper". [12]
Nikolai Kapustin, a Russian jazz-classical composer, wrote a piano duet called "Paraphrase on Dizzy Gillespie's 'Manteca' " featuring the two main themes and a middle section with blues-style improvisations. [13]
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, scat singing, bent horn, pouched cheeks, and light-hearted personality provided one of bebop's most prominent symbols.
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Arsenio Rodríguez was a Cuban musician, composer and bandleader. He played the tres, as well as the tumbadora, and he specialized in son, rumba and other Afro-Cuban music styles. In the 1940s and 1950s Rodríguez established the conjunto format and contributed to the development of the son montuno, the basic template of modern-day salsa. He claimed to be the true creator of the mambo and was an important as well as a prolific composer who wrote nearly two hundred songs.
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Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. Afro-Cuban jazz emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
Machito was a Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazz and create both Cubop and salsa music. He was raised in Havana with the singer Graciela, his foster sister.
Prudencio Mario Bauzá Cárdenas was an Afro-Cuban jazz, Latin, and jazz musician. He was among the first to introduce Cuban music to the United States by bringing Cuban musical styles to the New York City jazz scene. While Cuban bands had had popular jazz tunes in their repertoire for years, Bauzá's composition "Tangá" was the first piece to blend jazz harmony and arranging technique, with jazz soloists and Afro-Cuban rhythms. It is considered the first true Afro-Cuban jazz or Latin jazz tune.
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Luciano Pozo González, known professionally as Chano Pozo, was a Cuban jazz percussionist, singer, dancer, and composer. Despite only living to age 33, he played a major role in the founding of Latin jazz. He co-wrote some of Dizzy Gillespie's Latin-flavored compositions, such as "Manteca" and "Tin Tin Deo", and was the first Latin percussionist in Gillespie's band.
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