Mambo dancing videos and lessons

A difficult dance originally featuring wild acrobatic moves, the Mambo is performed to a 4/4 beat. It is rhythmically similar to the slower bolero, though it has a more complex pattern of steps. As in many Latin dances, the dancers don’t move on the first beat. The combination that follows is described as “quick-quick-slow” or “step, rock, close, pause.” The foot moves (steps) on the second beat. On the third beat the weight shifts (rocks) to the opposite foot. On the fourth beat the foot returns to its original position (close), and the sequence repeats after a pause on the 1, (sometimes counted as 5). Dancers swing their hips through each step, creating a fluid motion and a sensuous atmosphere.

The word “Mambo,” meaning “conversation with the gods,” comes from West Africa. The dance is a descendant of the traditional Cuban danza of the 18th century--which was itself a Cuban version of the European contra dance--and the Afro-Cuban Rumba. The Rumba, a dance developed from West African drum rhythms and traditional dances brought over with the slave trade, was combined with the danza to produce a style called Son. The music that developed out of this crossbreeding was called danzón.

During the 1930’s and 1940’s the Cuban cellist Orestes López, along with his brother, bassist Israel “Cachao” López, composed more than 2,000 danzónes. In the 1930’s they developed a genre called ritmo nuevo (new rhythm), and in 1938 the brothers premiered a ritmo nuevo danzón they called “el danzón Mambo.” (Cachao later moved to the United States; his credit was removed from many of the brothers’ compositions by Castro’s censors.)

The Mambo, as a dance, didn’t catch on until bandleader Dámaso Perez Prado introduced a slower ritmo nuevo dance he called the “Mambo” at the Tropicana nightclub in Havana during the early 1940’s. Around 1950 Perez Prado toured the United States billing himself as the “King of Mambo.” Americans, who were still calling a variety of Latin-style tunes “Rumbas,” went crazy for the Mambo, inspiring a number of hit songs including Perry Como’s “Papa Loves Mambo” and Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano,” both in 1954.

During the 1950’s and 1960’s, dancers in the U.S. were influenced by both Cuban and Puerto Rican dance styles and the Mambo picked up steps from American Jazz and Swing. By adding some Puerto Rican flavor and a quick shuffling side step to the Mambo, dancers created the Triple Mambo, or Cha-cha, as it came to be known.

By the late 1960’s and early 1970’s U.S. dancers started doing the Mambo to a faster beat. The faster Mambo was a major influence on the pan-Latin dance that came to be known as Salsa. The new Cha-cha, Salsa, and Mambo migrated back to Latin America, where they remain popular.

In the 1990’s, Salsa dancing returned as an international craze, but the Mambo hasn’t been forgotten. Perez Prado’s 1949 composition “Mambo #5” even made a comeback in 1999 as an international hit with lyrics by Lou Bega.