Dizzy Gillespie by Cabu

An anthology 1947/1957

Jazz musicians did not wait for the advent of bossa nova , in the sixties, or salsa , in the seventies, to incorporate into their language elements of what we now call today Latin music : from the twenties, Jelly Roll Morton spiced up his music with what he nicely called the “Spanish tinge” , and Duke Ellington from the thirties began to enrich his sound universe with swaying rhythms specific to this idiom.

But none other than the trumpeter and conductor Dizzy Gillespie , in the mid and late forties, had invested in this crossbreeding with such resounding success: deeply imbued with this “Latin” spirit (he composed among others Manteca , A Night In Tunisia and Algo Bueno , excuse me), he did not hesitate to reinforce his orchestra with authentic Cuban percussionists and to call on orchestrators of Havana origin to carry out this marriage. which was then called “Afro-Cuban jazz” . Happy marriage, which has just celebrated its golden wedding anniversary, but how beautiful and irresistible the newlyweds were...