The first jazz to be openly based in-clave was "Tanga" composed by Mario Bauza’s and recorded by Machito and his Afro-Cubans, the first song not only to seek out modal synchronization, but to play it and make it their own. Arranging techniques with Afro-Cuban rhythms gave the music a unique and identifiable sound that no one had heard before. “Tanga” was the first song to effectively combine jazz big band arranging with jazz oriented soloists utilizing an authentic Afro-Cuban based rhythm section in a successful manner
They were the first Afro-Cuban band to explicitly explore the conception of a clave contradiction from an arranging position. The ability to knit effortlessly from one side of the clave to the other without breaking the rhythm was nothing short of jaw dropping.
Bauza’s “Tanga” was a quickly paced piano vamp, followed by saxophones and then the trumpets. At first the chords sound somewhat broken, but the unique sounds start to take shape with rhythm instruments, such as the congas, forging a rhythm that was jazzed up with and Afro-Cuban beat and then letting the horns loose.
It was not uncommon for the Machito and his Afro-Cuban to let rip ten to fifteen minute jams. The song “Tanga” itself goes well beyond 7 minutes. This also was a tremendous breakaway from the…show more content… Because of this, all three instruments increased their roles in Afro-Cuban music, also, the use of certain patterns by the bongos in mambo horn sections, the increased the metrical expressions of the conga, freeing its role in a song setting. The increase importance of the timbales role (simply two wooden sticks that gave the band its 3-2 Clave rhythm) set up the horns to play freely over the beat and even freelance. The sound created by all of this rhythm underneath the freewheeling horns, was the beginning of the multiple layering of