Since the early Cuban jazz bands were rarely recorded, it follows that we do not know the range of music that they played. Later Cuban Jazz includes a fusion of rhythmic components from Cuban music, with American jazz. Although jazz had long had what Jelly Roll Morton called the Spanish Tinge through the interchange of musicians from Havana and New Orleans during the late 19th and early 20th century, it never actually used the Afro-Cuban rhythmic components or percussion instruments. A good example of this style would be Caravan by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol.
Laureano Fuentes (1825–1898) came from a family of musicians and wrote the first opera to be composed on the island, La hija de Jéfe (the Chief's daughter). This was later lengthened and staged under the title Seila. His numerous works spanned all genres. Gaspar Villate (1851–1891) produced abundant and wide-ranging work, all centered on opera.[6]p239 José White (1836–1918), a mulatto of a Spanish father and an Afrocuban mother, was a composer and a violinist of international merit. He learnt to play sixteen instruments, and lived, variously, in Cuba, Latin America and Paris. His most famous work is La bella cubana, a habanera.
The origin of the term Afro-Cuban Jazz dates back to the 1940es and referred to the fusion style that was created by musicians, arrangers, and band leaders like Mario Bauza, Frank Grillo Machito , Chico O'Farrill, and John Birks Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie is well known to be one of the originators and main exponents of the Jazz style called Be-Bop, which reigned during the late Forties and early Fifties. Consequently, Afro-Cuban Jazz from that time is often called Cubop. Interestingly, this musical development took largely place in the United States, or North America - as opposed to Cuba, for instance.
In Cuba, a predominantly instrumental style called Descarga became popular in the 1950es. Descarga means discharge, hinting at the jam , or free improvisation in the way it was common to North American Jazz. Descarga sessions were prominently recorded under the names of Israel Cachao L oacute;pez, or Bebo Valdreacute;s, for instance. The specification Afro-Cuban Jazz was used on a 1952 record by Bebo Vald eacute;s to characterize titles that had at least a passage of Jazz swing rhythm built in. The Descarga concept was continued in the U.S. in the Sixties by various Latin musicians and bands, like the Cesta All-Stars, the Tico All-Stars, or the Fania All-Stars, as well as the various groups of the Cuban conga player Mongo Santamaria at live sessions and record dates. And still, many Jazz titles of the Hard Bop era were written and/or interpreted with a - mostly undefined - Latin rhythm.
