This set from Giant Steps really gets it and lays down some of the hottest of the early Afro-Cuban jazz sounds that came down the pipe during and just after the bebop era. The first disc assembles 20 tracks by American jazz bands deeply influenced by the roots sounds of Cuban music, from the likes of
Stan Kenton,
Woody Herman,
Tadd Dameron and
James Moody and revealing how deeply Latin music influenced the big band sounds in America. That said, there's a slew of
Dizzy Gillespie cuts in the middle that reveal how that crossover was made as
Diz -- and Charlie Parker -- actually played with
Machito and took in the music's jumpin' rhythmic attack and harmonic modalities and brought them into bebop as it evolved. The second disc, however, is the authentic article. Here is a boatload of cuts from
Machito,
Chico O'Farrill,
Noro Morales,
Pérez Prado and
Tito Puente to offer what American jazz offered back. This is a creative exchange like few others, but the Cubans gave us far more in helping to broaden the colors, textures and polyrhythms that made the early '50s such a compelling time in the music. Check out the way
Kenton stretches both jazz and Afro-Cuban music to the boundaries and takes it all one step further, or the way
Machito used
Ellingtonian harmonics to reach out of the folk forms of Cuban orchestra music. This is a killer set from start to stop with only one dog track in the batch, and you'll have to figure out which one it is (the hint is that it's on disc two and by a blind British pianist). ~ Thom Jurek