Date: 2022-12-23
Time: 06:04:42 UTC
Title: Copacetic Music Hour Preview, 12/23/22: Machito
Another week has passed, which means it's time for another episode of the
copacetic music hour! This week's featured artist is the famous Cuban American
Latin jazz musician Francisco Raul Gutierrez Grillo, better known as Machito.
Conflicting accounts of Machito's birth indicate he was born in Tampa or
Havana. Nonetheless, he grew up the son of a cigar manufacturer in the Jesus
Maria neighborhood of Havana. Machito's musical career spanned some six
decades, beginning in Cuba and then continuing in the United States after he
moved to New York City in 1937. Machito formed the famous Afro-Cubans in 1940,
which brought together Cuban rhythms and contemporary big band arrangements in
a single group. Together with colleagues, like Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker,
Dizzy Gillespie, he would popularize Cubop (Afro-Cuban jazz) throughout the
1940s.
While Machito would shift to a smaller eight-part ensemble in the mid-1970s, he
would still continue performing intensively until his death in 1984, winning a
Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording for Machito & His Salsa Big Band '82 in
1983. His legacy includes not only the creation of Latin jazz but also the
first multi-racial band in the US; first band to combine congas, bongos, and
timbales in Afro-Cuban percussion; and first band to introduce modal harmony
"sheet of sound" effects in its music, amongst many other innovations.
Tomorrow night, as always, we will enjoy a sampling of Machito's hits alongside
a fireside IRC chat at tilde.chat channel tilderadio (#tilderadio). Join us!
