ABSTRACT
Mambo is mid-century music. It kept America dancing between 19491959. It bridged the gap between the modern jazz, an art music leaving Lindy in limbo, and the rise of rock dancing in the spring of 1956. In the process, it also revitalized the big band concept, which had languished in jazz, and inspired a distinguished and abiding body of music and choreography. The music lives on, in the special hard-swinging passages of a salsa or meringue tune called the mambo section. And the dancing does too, in venues like Orchard Beach in New York City, or La Conga in Hollywood, or virtually anywhere in Miami. Sample its history in this tale of four cities.
