Bauzá, Mario (1911–1993)

Mario Bauzá, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and composer, was one of the foremost figures in the creation of a new style of music that mixed together jazz and Afro-Cuban music. He was born April 28, 1911, in Havana. The son of a black cigar maker, he was raised by his white godfather, a military man of wealth and family. He studied classical music and by age sixteen was playing bass clarinet with the Havana Symphony Orchestra. He first visited New York in 1927 as a member of a Cuban dance band. He took up saxophone and trumpet and moved to New York for good in 1930. By 1933 he was playing with the great swing band of drummer Chick Webb at the Savoy; Webb made him musical director in the following year. In 1939 he joined the band of Cab Calloway, whom he encouraged to hire his friend, Dizzy Gillespie.

Bauzá's dream of marrying jazz and Cuban music came true with the founding of a band led by his brother-in-law, Machito and his Afro-Cubans, in 1940. He was lead trumpeter and musical director of that band for decades thereafter. This group played for Latin audiences at the Palladium in New York as well as for African American audiences at the Savoy and Renaissance ballrooms. Surprisingly, the band did not play in Bauzá's native country. Nevertheless, it was one of the most influential bands of the day. Bauzá left Machito's band in 1975 and created his own orchestra, which he led until his death on July 12, 1993.

See alsoMusic: Popular Music and Dance .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Austerlitz, Paul. Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.

Loza, Steven. Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Orovia, Helio. Cuban Music from A to Z. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

                               Andrew J. Kirkendall