Introduction and background Throughout the history of Latin music, there has hardly been anyone who has heard this genre and not been fascinated by its exciting rhythms. Latin music, specifically mambo, gained wide recognition among the non-Latin population in the twentieth century and demonstrated a remarkable ability to merge with other genres as well as nurture them in return. Mambo was originally a Cuban musical form that gained popularity in 1940s–1950s due to activities of Cuban musicians and enthusiasm of their American colleagues. The places that hosted mambo dance and music in its golden age were, correspondingly, Havana and New York City. The mambo music genre demonstrates a unique fusion of international music traditions. Historically, the roots of mambo music can be traced back to three cultures: European, Haitian, and African. The European dance tradition was represented in Cuba by the Spanish genre of contradanza , from which mambo gained its specific bass line (Waxer 141). Contradanza was brought to Cuba in the eighteenth century by Haitian planters of French origin and their slaves who fled from the 1791 Haitian Revolution (Waxer 149). This originally European dance gradually assimilated elements of local music and evolved into the genre of danzon by the beginning of the twentieth century (Leymarie 40). The several sections of danzon ended with a lively coda usually improvised by the musicians, and each section featured one of the solo instruments of the standard danzon ensemble — a violin, a flute or a clarinet (Waxer 149). Mostly European in terms of melody, harmony and instrumentation, danzon was performed by black ensembles and therefore gradually acquired specific African rhythmic ‘swing’ (Waxer 149). Both the solo improvisations and the syncopated swing performance manner were inherited and developed in mambo genre later on. The African roots of mambo reveal themselves in the very name of the genre. African by origin, ‘mambo’ stems from the name of a Bantu sacred drum and means “conversation with the gods” (Leymarie 40). Subsequently, the word was used to designate a part of danzon and only later became a name for a separate musical genre (Waxer 150). Another African connection is traced between mambo and the genre of son . The word son means ‘sound’ in Spanish and refers to a style of music by large based on the Afro-Cuban rumba (Waxer 142). The two sections of son feature various elements: while in the first section, tema , the song itself is presented, the second section, montuno , is an improvisated dialogue between the soloist and the instruments (Manuel, Bilby, & Largey 46). In addition to the structure of rumba, son borrowed its rhythmical pattern, slightly altering it but preserving the overall line of the clave (Waxer 143). Afro-Cuban influence on mambo music is also traced through the introduction of a typically rumba drum tumbadoro in the son ensemble by popular Cuban band leader Antonio Rodriguez (Waxer 143). In addition to popularizing an enlarged son ensemble, Rodriguez ascribed a predefined part to each of its instruments (Manuel, Bilby, & Largey 45). Therefore, the African roots of mambo can be traced on mult