Pérez Prado: A Story of Rhythm, Drumming and Dancing

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.13.1.0127
• Pages: 127-149
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Raúl Fernández
• Subject Matter: mambo,drums,dance,rhythm,Benny Moré,rumberas

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ACADEMIC ARTICLE

PEREZ PRADO: A STORY OF RHYTHM,

DRUMMING AND DANCING

Raúl Fernández

University of California, Irvine

Raúl Fernández is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chicano Latino Studies at the

University of California, Irvine. He is the author of several books including Latin Jazz: The

Perfect Combination, Chronicle Books and Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition

Service, 2002; From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz, University of California Press, 2006;

and Ontología del son y otros ensayos, Editorial Letras Cubanas (forthcoming).

Abstract

Despite his success or perhaps because of it, the renowned Cuban musician Pérez

Prado was the target of criticism from some of his contemporaries. For some

jazz musicians Prado’s compositions lacked substance, were commercial even

bordering on corny. Yet he also composed "concerts" which hardly had commercial

success as an object. If his mambos are judged as lacking in quality, how to

explain the interest classical musicians expressed in them? These questions led

me to consider an idea advanced in popular music circles as to whether there

was not one but several “Pérez Prados”, i.e. one that composed mambos; another

dedicated to marketing light commercial tunes; yet a third focused on "serious"

concert music. An analysis of three central elements in all of his work do not

reveal several "Pérez Prados”. Rather it demonstrates that Prado was a single

composer with different facets arising from diverse circumstances and artistic

and economic needs, but based on the same musical foundations. Prado was a

maestro whose variations never abandoned the main themes: rhythm, drums

and dancing.

Keywords: mambo, drums, dance, rhythm, Benny Moré, rumberas

128 ACADEMIC ARTICLE – RAÚL FERNÁNDEZ

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 13.1 Summer 2021

Pérez Prado has two qualities I admire very much – style and rhythm . . . everything

he does, everything he writes is full of rhythm.

(Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill)

Pero qué bonito y sabroso bailan el mambo las mexicanas . . . !

(Benny Moré)

The goal of this essay is to clarify a conceptual conundrum regarding the work

of the great musician Dámaso Pérez Prado. Much has been written about his

oeuvre. We know of his gift for composing and orchestrating successful melo-

dies, a talent revealed very early during his time with the Casino de la Playa

jazzband in Havana, later manifested in his first mambo tunes, confirmed in his

arrangement of "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White", and reaffirmed with

his composition "Patricia”. In the span of ten years he did what no popular

music composer accomplished before or after: recording with four different

orchestras four hits of universal impact, “Mambo No. 5”, "Mambo Jambo”,

“Cherry Pink” and “Patricia”. Three of these were his own compositions that,

starting with the mambo, were nourished along the way by strands of cha-cha-

chá and rock-and-roll. Writers like Jack Kerouac, García Márquez and Vargas

Llosa lavished praise on Prado. Film directors Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder,

Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Carlos Saura and Pedro Almodóvar used his

tunes in soundtracks; his music was present in US and European movies that

featured Jane Russell, Silvana Mangano, Anita Ekberg, Woody Allen and Clint

Eastwood. Prado’s imprint is heard in innumerable jingles all over the world.

Born and trained in Cuba, Pérez Prado became a global artist. He universalised

the sounds of Cuban music and simultaneously Cubanised world music.

Despite his success or perhaps because of it, Prado was the target of criticism

often expressed sotto voce by some of his contemporaries. For some jazz musi-

cians Prado’s compositions lacked substance, were commercial even bordering on

corny. But then how to judge the "concerts" composed by Prado which hardly

had commercial success as an object? And if his mambos are judged as lacking in

quality, how to explain the interest classical musicians expressed in them?

These questions led me to consider an idea advanced in popular music cir-

cles as to whether there was not one but several “Pérez Prados”, i.e. one that

composed mambos; another dedicated to marketing light commercial tunes;

yet a third focused on "serious" concert music. Or that perhaps it is better to

think of one Prado, a composer with different facets all sharing common foun-

dations? That is the conundrum I seek to resolve with an examination of

Prado’s musical biography. To that end I completed an extensive reading of