Latin Jazz in New York City

Latin Jazz Artists

This is a new section to support New York City’s jazz community. We are adding to it as we go.

Antonio Sánchez is a multiple Grammy-winner and Golden Globe-nominated jazz fusion drummer. 🇲🇽

Bobby Sanabria, the multiple Grammy-nominated drummer, bandleader, and educator; leads the Multiverse Big Band, and hosts WBGO jazz radio’s Latin Jazz Cruise Fridays. He’s a real Nuyorican S.O.B (Son of the Bronx).¡Ashé! 🇵🇷

Chris Botti is a New York Italian who is one of the world’s most popular jazz instrumentalists. His Holiday Residency is pushing 20 years. 🇮🇹

Dafnis Prieto is a Grammy-winning, MacArthur Fellow, Cuban jazz drummer, composer and educator who has almost supernatural rhythm. 🇨🇺

Dayramir González is a Cuban jazz pianist who swings hard for the ancestors. 🇨🇺

Eddie Palmieri, a Puerto Rican NEA Jazz Master, is one of New York’s elder jazzmen who has been influential his entire life, and is now mentoring the next generation. 🇵🇷

Edmar Castaneda is a New York Colombian harpist who makes heavenly jazz inspired by the folk music of Colombia and Venezuela. 🇨🇴

Melvis Santa is an Afro-Cuban jazz singer, leader, and educator whose band, Melvis Santa & Jazz Orishas, plays jazz for the ancestors. ¡Ashé! 🇨🇺

Pedrito Martinez is the world’s first-call rumba percussionist. He plays rumba, timba, jazz, and pop that can change your life. 🇨🇺

NYC Jazz Organizations

Belongó, formerly the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, is the world’s leading Latin jazz organization. Led by Cuban jazz legend Arturo O’Farrill, it supports artists and venues, composes and performs for dance, and reaches into the deepest roots of jazz around the world, far beyond the O’Farrill family’s Cuban roots. 🇨🇺

Jazz at Lincoln Center, led by Wynton Marsalis, is the world’s leading African American jazz organization. 🇺🇸

National Jazz Museum in Harlem preserves, promotes, and presents the Caribbean culture that is America’s national music. 🇺🇸

NYC Jazz Theaters

92nd Street Y, New York’s, Kaufmann Concert Hall hosts some jazz concerts in the Upper East Side.

Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall is used for jazz concerts in Midtown.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center now hosts some jazz concerts.

Hostos Center in Mott Haven, The Bronx, has the Northeast’s most adventurous Latin jazz programming.

Harlem Stage hosts legends and is an incubator for artists who become legends.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater and Appel Room are jazz theaters.

Metropolitan Opera is presenting jazz operas.

NYC Jazz Festivals

Blue Note Jazz Festival is New York City’s biggest jazz festival.

BRIC JazzFest is usually in October.

Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is part of SummerStage.

Django Reinhardt Festival at Birdland celebrates the French Romani jazz manouche guitar legend.

Jazz in July at the 92nd Street Y is one of New York’s hottest summer jazz festivals.

Nublu Jazz Festival is at Nublu in Manhattan’s East Village.

Winter Jazzfest, with its APAP showcase marathons, is at Le Poisson Rouge, other Greenwich Village night clubs, and in Brooklyn in January.

Women in Latin Jazz Festival produced by Annette A. Aguilar & Stringbeans is at Hostos Center in Mott Haven, The Bronx in May.

Women’s Jazz Festival is at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem in March.

Latin Jazz is a New York Native

Latin Jazz in New York City is native. Jazz and Latin jazz cats used to cross Fifth Avenue to sit in with each other.

The Caribbean hero twins, separated at birth by colonial divisions in New Orleans and Cuba / Ayití / Quisqueya / Hispaniola, were reunited. It sounds like magical realism, but it’s real.

In the 1940s while Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and others were developing “bebop” modern jazz in Harlem; Mario Bauzá, music director of Machito and His Afro-Cubans, was developing “cubop” Latin jazz in “El Barrio” East Harlem.

It happened one night at the Park Avenue Ballroom on the intersection of Harlem and “El Barrio” East Harlem on May 29, 1943. That night Bauzá composed “Tanga,” the first song that fully expressed the Latin jazz form. It was the first true blending of New Orleans and Cuban jazz traditions. Listen to it on YouTube.

So bebop (modern jazz) and cubop (latin jazz) were created Uptown in Harlem and East Harlem by people who were playing together. Dizzy Gillespie completed the reunion when he later asked Bauzá for a conga player. His collaboration with conguero Chano Pozo led to jazz classics “Manteca” and “Tin tin deo.”

Don’t think badly of us for pointing this out, but “tanga” means cannabis in one of the African languages, and g-string in Spanish. Those two go together like jazz and latin jazz. It takes us back to the beginning of jass in Storyville, New Orleans. Don’t get excited, Latin music always begins in places like that. It’s about getting together.

Turns out Bauzá also played sax on “El manisero,” the first global Latin hit recorded by RCA Victor in 1930 New York. You can’t make this up.

Jazz is from New Orleans, the Caribbean, Mother Afrika, and Arabia

Jazz is Latin from its New Orleans roots, but those roots extend to Cuba, Haiti / Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, North Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and even Arabia.

Jazz and classical music are two sides of the same coin. A lot of Latin music is in conversation with jazz. Brazilian samba jazz is bossa nova, the world’s most popular music after the Beatles.

New Orleans jazz, Brazilian choró, and Jewish klezmer developed independently, but all have the same vibe. Explain that!