page_title: Machito
section_title: Ten innovations
hierarchical_section_title: Machito / Notable innovations / Ten innovations
caption_attribution_description: English: son clave in 3-2 and 2-3
context_page_description: Machito was a Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazz and create both Cubop and salsa music. He was raised in Havana with the singer Graciela, his foster sister.
  In New York City, Machito formed the band the Afro-Cubans in 1940, and with Mario Bauzá as musical director, brought together Cuban rhythms and big band arrangements in one group. He made numerous recordings from the 1940s to the 1980s, many with Graciela as singer. Machito changed to a smaller ensemble format in 1975, touring Europe extensively. He brought his son and daughter into the band, and received a Grammy Award in 1983, one year before he died.
  Machito's music had an effect on the lives of many musicians who played in the Afro-Cubans over the years, and on those who were attracted to Latin jazz after hearing him. George Shearing, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Stan Kenton credited Machito as an influence. An intersection in East Harlem is named "Machito Square" in his honor.
context_section_description: 1 - The first band to make the triumvirate of congas, bongo, and timbales the standard battery of percussion in Afro-Cuban based dance music. Because of this, all three instruments heightened their roles in Afro-Cuban based dance music. The use of broken bell patterns by the bongocero in mambo horn sections, the increased rhythmic vocabulary of the conga drum and its function in a band setting, the increased importance of the timbales role in setting up figures played by the horns and accenting them as a jazz drummer would do in a big band. e.g. "Nague", also the first recorded example of all three percussion instruments playing as a section.
  2 - The first band to explore jazz arranging techniques with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Cuban big band arranger Chico O'Farrill stated, "This was a new concept in interpreting Cuban music with as much (harmonic) richness as possible. You have to understand how important this was. It made every other band that came after, followers."
  3 - The first band to explore modal harmony, a concept explored much later by Miles Davis and Gil Evans, from a jazz arranging perspective through their recording of "Tanga". Of note is the "sheet of sound" effect through the use of multiple layering.
  4 - The first big band to explore, from an Afro-Cuban rhythmic perspective, large scale extended compositional works. e.g. "The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite" by Chico O'Farill.
  5 - The first band to wed jazz big band arranging techniques in an original composition with jazz oriented soloists using an  Afro-Cuban based rhythm section. e.g. Gene Johnson - alto, Brew Moore - tenor, composition - "Tanga" (1943).
  6 - The first multi-racial band in the United States.
  7 - The first band in the United States to use the term "Afro-Cuban" as the band's moniker (Machito & The Afro-Cubans), thus acknowledging the West African roots of the music.
  8 - The first Afro-Cuban based dance band to overtly explore the concept of clave counterpoint from an arranging standpoint. The ability to weave seamlessly from one side of the clave to the other without breaking its rhythmic integrity within the structure of a musical arrangement.
  9 - The band set a standard of professionalism and musical excellence that had to be met by band leaders such as José Curbelo, Tito Puente, Marcelino Guerra, Tito Rodríguez, Elmo García, and any group that followed. Although it could be clearly argued that Xavier Cugat had established an extremely high level of professionalism much earlier with his orchestra at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel (1931), the sound emulated by the majority of bandleaders in New York City was not that of Cugat but that of the Machito Afro-Cubans. Cugat performed for high society elite, not for the Latino community which was concentrated in East Harlem (El Barrio) and the South Bronx. Cugat's sound was one they may have experienced through recordings on radio, but this community had little access to it.
  10 - The Machito Afro-Cubans provided a proving ground for the exchange of progressive musical ideas for Afro-Cuban based dance music and its fusion with jazz arranging techniques, along with jazz oriented soloists in a multi-racial framework that had not existed before.
  While he was music director for Machito, Mario Bauzá developed the 3-2 / 2-3 clave concept and terminology. A chord progression can begin on either side of clave. When the progression begins on the three-side, the song or song section is said to be in 3-2 clave. When the chord progression begins on the two-side, it is in 2-3 clave. In North America salsa and Latin jazz charts commonly represent clave in two measures of cut-time (2/2); this is most likely the influence of jazz conventions. When clave is written in two measures (above) changing from one clave sequence to the other is a matter of reversing the order of the measures.
caption: 3-2 clave (About this soundPlay (help·info)) and 2-3 clave (About this soundPlay (help·info)) written in cut-time.
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