THERE HAS BEEN A RHYTHMIC REVOLUTION IN ROCK … The basic patterns are now in even 8ths (as opposed to the traditional triplet feeling of most jazz). This has made another extremely important development possible: some very complex polyrhythms.
Don Ellis, 1969Footnote 1The Cubans, we came here and changed your American music from the bottom up! And nobody knows this! NOBODY WRITES ABOUT THIS!’
Mario Bauzá, 1988Footnote 2As the 1960s drew to a close, jazz trumpeter Don Ellis and music educator Thomas MacCluskey each published an article proclaiming that two coalescing rhythmic trends had occurred in post-war popular music.Footnote 3 In the subsequent two decades, the founding fathers of Latin jazz Mario Bauzá and Dizzy Gillespie asserted that Afro-Latin musics influenced this rhythmic transformationFootnote 4 – specifically, a transition from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet ‘monorhythm’ to straight-quaver polyrhythm, which culminated in rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s.Footnote 5 Bauzá, the musical director of mambo pioneers Machito and his Afro-Cubans, claimed that the impact of Cuban music and migration on this fundamental change in the rhythm of twentieth-century music has been written out of history. Ellis's and MacCluskey's articles seem to be evidence of Bauzá's claim. Neither article posits a Latin influence on the coalescing rhythmic trends, even though straight-quaver polyrhythm is most associated with Afro-Cuban music.Footnote 6
Three decades later, Bauzá's claim has not been interrogated by scholars. Corpus analyses suggest that a shift occurred from swung-quaver subdivisions and compound time signatures to straight-quaver subdivisions in US popular music between the 1950s and the 1960s.Footnote 7 Alexander Stewart's study of the shift from the shuffle, 12/8 and 6/8 to straight eighths assumes that the transition occurred and does not reference empirical evidence.Footnote 8 Latin American music and migration are most commonly identified as an influence on the rhythmic trend, principally by researchers positing ‘Latin tinges’ on US music such as John Storm Roberts, Robert Palmer, and Ned Sublette.Footnote 9 Citing Bauzá, Sublette suggests several explanations for the ‘amnesia’ of the Cuban influence on the trends.Footnote 10 However, no empirical evidence has been provided to indicate that a larger rhythmic transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm occurred, that Latin American music and migration were the predominant influence on this transition, nor that this influence has been erased. Recent monographs on popular music analysis have either overlooked the rhythmic trends or the historiographical significance of a forgotten Latin influence on them.Footnote 11 Meanwhile, Latinx studies has understandably focused on the direct participation of Latinx musicians in rock ’n’ roll,Footnote 12 rather than the often indirect influence of Afro-Latin rhythm on US popular music.Footnote 13
In order to fill this gap in the literature, this article answers one overarching question. Simply put: was Mario Bauzá right? Has a significant impact of Latin American music and migration on a rhythmic transformation of twentieth-century music been written out of history? This question is divided into four lines of inquiry. Did a rhythmic transition occur from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm in post-war popular music in the United States? Were Afro-Latin musics the predominant influence on a trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm? How can the impact of Latin American music and migration on this rhythmic trend be interpreted? Has a Latin influence on a rhythmic transformation of US popular music been erased, and if so why? In response to these questions, the article employs an original ‘mixed methods’ approach, combining music analysis, reception history, and sociocultural theory. Answering these questions is significant because, as Robert Palmer surmised, if Bauzá is right, ‘then the history of American music since World War Two is in need of serious revision’.Footnote 14
This study is structured in four sections, each of which addresses one of the four lines of inquiry. The first two sections focus on music theory and analysis. The last two sections focus on sociocultural analysis. The second and fourth sections also draw on reception history, comparing the reception of straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the music-industry trade press of the 1950s and early 1960s with the rock press of the 1960s and early 1970s.
First, I define key analytical terms before presenting the longitudinal findings of a corpus analysis. Specifically, I define monorhythm and polyrhythm based on musical examples provided by Bauzá and Gillespie, thereby introducing the basis of an original taxonomy of rhythmic texture. Then I establish empirically that a rhythmic transition occurred from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm in US popular music, culminating in 1961. Second, focusing on Paul Anka's ‘Diana’ and the hybrid musical style ‘rock-a-cha-cha’, I demonstrate that Afro-Latin musics (particularly Afro-Cuban styles) were the predominant musical influence on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Third, focusing on rock-a-cha-cha and its predecessor rhumba blues, I argue that the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation is a product of cosmopolitanism, which is shaped by both the mass migration to and mass media of global cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Fourth, I demonstrate that this Latin impact was erased by early rock historians, influenced by three main factors: the Black/white binary paradigm of race, the ‘Christ-like’ narrative of rock ’n’ roll history, and the ‘tinge’ metaphor of Latin influence.Footnote 15
Analytical definitions and rhythmic trends
There are two main definitions of polyrhythm: a narrow definition and a broad definition. The narrow definition understands polyrhythm as polymetre or cross-rhythm. Polymetre denotes the superimposition of different metres, achieved by dividing the bar into multiple metres simultaneously – usually, three over two (e.g., triplet minims in 2/2; Example 1a). Cross-rhythm denotes the overlapping of different rhythmic groupings – usually, ‘three across two’ (e.g., dotted crotchets in 2/2; Example 1b).Footnote 16 However, there is consensus among scholars of polyrhythm that Afro-Cuban music is polyrhythmic,Footnote 17 even though son and mambo do not feature polymetre while bolero and cha-cha-chá do not consistently feature cross-rhythm. Thus, the narrow definition of polyrhythm as polymetre or cross-rhythm is too limited – it works for much West African drumming in 12/8 but not for most Afro-Cuban music nor most US popular music in 4/4.Footnote 18
a) Polymetre, three over two; and b) cross-rhythm, ‘three across two’.
The broad definition of polyrhythm is lesser known but widely used. In his 2016 book The African Imagination in Music, Kofi Agawu defines polyrhythm as ‘the simultaneous use of two or more contrasting rhythms in a musical texture’.Footnote 19 This broad definition is employed in this article because it works for Afro-Latin and African-American styles. However, Agawu does not clarify what type of rhythmic patterns produce polyrhythm in the 4/4 context. The examples of polyrhythm provided by Bauzá and Gillespie (discussed below) are neither polymetre nor cross-rhythm. Instead, the bandleaders seem to distinguish between monorhythm and polyrhythm according to what I term ‘beat-level’ and ‘bar-level’ rhythmic patterns – a reformulation of Jay Rahn's ‘symmetrical’ and ‘asymmetrical’ patterns.Footnote 20 Building on a distinction between beat-level and bar-level rhythmic patterns, I nuance the broad definition of polyrhythm (and monorhythm) below.
Bauzá stated that Afro-Cuban music influenced a change in the bass and drum parts of US jazz and popular music from the short rhythmic patterns (based on crotchet divisions) of swing in the 1940s to the longer rhythmic patterns (based on straight-quaver subdivisions) of Afro-Cuban music by the late 1950s:
We made changes starting from the bottom—the bass, the drums … Before they started to listen to us in the 1940s, all the American bass players played nothing but dum-dum-dum, 1-2-3-4, ‘walking’ bass. Then they heard the Cuban tumbaos (bass riffs) Cachao [Israel López Valdés] was playing, and they started to go da-da-dat—stop and rest—da-dat! Da-da-dat—stop and rest—da-dat! And the American drummers, the same. They were playing this even swish-swish-swish-swish on the ride cymbal, you know? Then they hear us, and the snare and the tom-tom start talking back and forth, like Cuban congas and bongos. When the electric bass guitar comes in, around 1957, the style people develop for that instrument, the patterns, the whole feel, it's Cuban.Footnote 21
Bauzá's illustrations of US bass and drum patterns of the 1930s and 1940s are a walking bassline and a crotchet ride pattern, as heard in recordings such as Louis Jordan's 1950 instrumental ‘Psycho-Loco’. These are ‘beat-level’ rhythmic patterns. I define a beat-level rhythmic pattern as a repeated rhythmic cell that is one-to-two beats in length (Example 2a).
Mario Bauzá's examples of a) US ‘beat-level’ bass and drum patterns of 1930s and 1940s swing, with pitch added; and b) Cuban-influenced ‘bar-level’ bass and drum patterns of the late 1950s – implicitly, the straight-quaver bass-vocal riff of Richard Berry, ‘Louie Louie’ (1957; transposed to C major) with the conga accents of René Touzet, ‘El Loco Cha Cha’ (1956).
I infer from Robert Palmer's verbal transcription that Bauzá's example of Cuban-influenced bass and drum patterns is ‘Louie Louie’, which was made famous by the Kingsmen in 1963. ‘Da-da-dat—stop and rest—da-dat!’ evokes the riff from ‘Louie Louie’ for two reasons. First, in Richard Berry's original 1957 recording of the rock ’n’ roll standard, the riff was performed by a bass-register doo wop vocalist with ‘da-da-dat’ syllables. Second, Berry took the riff from a cha-cha-chá recording released earlier that year (namely, René Touzet's ‘El Loco Cha Cha’), which Palmer discussed later in his article.Footnote 22 The passage ‘the snare and the tom-tom start talking back and forth, like Cuban congas and bongos’ implies a common adaptation of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern to the drum kit. This standard conga pattern can be heard in ‘El Loco Cha Cha’ and the drum kit adaptation of it can be heard in Ray Charles's 1959 hit ‘What'd I Say’. Bauzá's illustrations of the Cuban-influenced bass and drum patterns of the late 1950s are ‘bar-level’ rhythmic patterns. I define a ‘bar-level’ rhythmic pattern as a repeated rhythmic cell which is one-to-two bars in length (Example 2b).Footnote 23
Pitch is not considered in these categories. The walking bassline is categorized as a beat-level pattern because rhythmically it is a repeated crotchet, despite the fact that melodically it may not repeat at all. Hypermetre is also excluded. Both a backbeat and a swing ride pattern repeat every two beats and are therefore categorized as beat-level patterns, even though musicians conceive of them as being one bar long.Footnote 24 At its simplest, Bauzá argued that, in the 1950s, Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns were longer (one-to-two bars long) than US-American rhythmic patterns (one-to-two beats long). It follows that layering longer, bar-level rhythmic patterns leads to a more complex rhythmic texture than layering shorter, beat-level patterns.
Gillespie strongly implied that Afro-Cuban music influenced a transition from monorhythm to polyrhythm.Footnote 25 He cited his 1940s composition ‘Night in Tunisia’ as an early example of polyrhythm in African-American music.Footnote 26 Gillespie does not define monorhythm. However, based on a comparison of two early recordings of ‘Night in Tunisia’, I argue that he understands monorhythm as a musical texture in which no more than one bar-level rhythmic pattern is employed simultaneously (hence the prefix ‘mono-’), alongside any number of beat-level patterns. Gillespie seems to define polyrhythm as a musical texture in which more than one different bar-level rhythmic pattern is employed simultaneously, again alongside any number of beat-level patterns.Footnote 27 Specifically, in 1944, Gillespie recorded ‘Night in Tunisia’ for the first time, with Sarah Vaughan, as a swing song entitled ‘Interlude’, which was released by Continental. ‘Interlude’ is monorhythmic. It features one bar-level pattern in the horns over three beat-level patterns in the rhythm section (Example 3a). Two years later, Gillespie recorded ‘Night in Tunisia’ as a Latin-jazz instrumental for RCA Victor, which was released in 1947.Footnote 28 ‘Night in Tunisia’ is polyrhythmic. It features five bar-level patterns and no beat-level patterns (Example 3b).
An inference of Dizzy Gillespie's distinction between monorhythm and polyrhythm, illustrated by a comparison of two recordings of ‘Night in Tunisia’, A section, first six bars, accompaniment: a) Sarah Vaughan, ‘Interlude’ ([1944] 2001; 0:21–35), an example of swung-quaver monorhythm; and b) Dizzy Gillespie, ‘Night in Tunisia’ (1946), an example of straight-quaver polyrhythm. By John ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie and Frank Paparelli. Copyright © 1944: UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Ltd.
On one occasion Gillespie does define polyrhythm as ‘four or five different musicians playing different rhythms at the same time’, as heard in the 1947 recording of ‘Night in Tunisia’.Footnote 29 However, he also indicates that two bar-level patterns are sufficient for polyrhythm in reference to the song, stating that ‘where the bass says, “do-do-do-do-do-do,” and “daanh-da-da-da-da-da” was being played against that [in the saxophone]. That was the sense of polyrhythm (see again Example 3b).’Footnote 30 Indeed, in three additional Latin-jazz recordings of ‘Night in Tunisia’, Gillespie employed these two bar-level patterns alone (the bass and saxophone pattern) without any other bar-level patterns.Footnote 31 I employ Gillespie's definition of monorhythm and polyrhythm in this article.Footnote 32
Played simultaneously, Bauzá's examples of Cuban-influenced bass and drum patterns of the late 1950s create a straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture (see again Example 2b). However, his examples of US bass and drum patterns of the 1930s and 1940s do not feature any quaver subdivisions (see again Example 2a). The resulting rhythmic texture is categorized as crotchet monorhythm. Bauzá's claim of a fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war popular music in the United States seems to refer to a transformation from crotchet and swung-quaver monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm, culminating in rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s such as ‘Louie Louie’. I add compound time signatures to the crotchet and swung-quaver category since 12/8 and 6/8 were common in 1950s R&B; for example, Fats Domino's 1956 hit ‘Blueberry Hill’. Thus, I interrogate a transition from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm.
Having defined my terms, I conducted a corpus analysis of the rhythm of 431 year-end hits on Billboard's mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts from 1950 to 1965.Footnote 33 The findings are illustrated in Figure 1.Footnote 34 Straight-quaver polyrhythm became the dominant rhythmic texture by 1961.Footnote 35 To hear this rhythmic transition in effect, listen to Elvis Presley's 1956 number-one single ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (swung-quaver monorhythm; Example 4a) followed by his 1960 comeback single ‘It's Now or Never’ (straight-quaver polyrhythm; Example 4b). This study establishes empirically that a rhythmic transition from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm did occur in post-war popular music in the United States, culminating in 1961.
A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet monorhythm and straight-quaver polyrhythm on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.
An example of the rhythmic transformation: a) Elvis Presley, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (1956), swung-quaver monorhythm; and b) Presley, ‘It's Now or Never’ (1960), straight-quaver polyrhythm.
Musical influences
In this section, I interrogate the musical influences on the rhythmic transformation. I assess the influences on the songs in the sample that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm through both the music analysis of a representative case study (the teen idol Paul Anka's 1957 hit ‘Diana’) and the critical reception of these songs in the contemporaneous music-industry trade press. I then take a supplementary sample of songs that were reviewed at the time as examples of ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ and analyse those. Methodologically, this movement from music analysis to critical reception and back again provides an original model for the study of musical influence.
Analysis: ‘Diana’
‘Diana’ is a representative case study for two reasons: first, it is the earliest example of rock ’n’ roll that features straight-quaver polyrhythm in the sample; second, each of the three bar-level rhythmic patterns that underpin the A section of ‘Diana’ features in around a third of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample. It is not possible to establish a specific chain of influence on the rhythmic patterns employed in ‘Diana’ because there are no published interviews with the song's producer and arranger Don Costa.Footnote 36 The lineages illustrated below refer to Latin influences on the most common bar-level rhythmic patterns in general, rather than to documented Latin influences on ‘Diana’ in particular.
Before discussing the impact of Afro-Latin musics, I consider two other possible influences on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm: West African drumming and swung-quaver polyrhythm. West African polyrhythm does not appear to have influenced the rhythmic transformation for two reasons. First, West African polyrhythm did not become well known in the United States until 1960, three years after the release of ‘Diana’, with the popularity of Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion – which comprises Nigerian percussion and chanting. Indeed, Billboard and Cash Box did not employ the term ‘polyrhythm’ to describe African music in the 1950s and early 1960s. Instead, they most often used ‘polyrhythm’ to describe Latin jazz, such as Machito and his Afro-Cubans. Second, although the majority of the tracks on Drums of Passion feature straight-quaver polyrhythm, none of the polyrhythmic songs in the sample seem to exhibit any specific West African instruments or techniques. For example, the chanting heard on Drums of Passion is not heard in the sample.Footnote 37 Conversely, all but one of the thirteen songs in the sample that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm before ‘Diana’ exhibit a Latin influence. Specifically, straight-quaver polyrhythm is heard on the mainstream charts in bolero- and tango-influenced hits and on the R&B charts in ‘rhumba blues’ – a term that was employed at the time to denote a Cuban-influenced style of R&B that typically featured straight-quaver polyrhythm – for example, Ray Charles’ ‘What'd I Say’. Afro-Latin musics seem more likely to have influenced the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm than West African drumming.
Swung-quaver polyrhythm does not seem to have been the predominant influence on the rhythmic transformation: 5% of the songs in the sample feature swung-quaver polyrhythm, while 13% feature straight-quaver polyrhythm. Two-thirds of the swung-quaver polyrhythmic songs are found on the R&B charts. Early examples of swung-quaver polyrhythm appear to have been influenced by swing ostinati, while later examples feature Latin-influenced rhythmic patterns. R&B featuring swung-quaver polyrhythm had some influence on rock ’n’ roll featuring straight-quaver polyrhythm. This can be seen in ‘Diana’. ‘Diana’ features a bar-level backing-vocal pattern with straight-quaver subdivisions in four bars of the A section (Example 5). This backing-vocal pattern is previously heard with swung-quaver subdivisions in early 1950s R&B; for example, the Dominoes’ 1951 hit ‘Sixty-Minute Man’. However, this bar-level pattern may also have been influenced by Afro-Latin musics, since a variation of it features in the tenor saxophone in Gillespie's ‘Night in Tunisia’ (see again Example 3b). Moreover, the three bar-level patterns that underpin all of the A section of ‘Diana’ clearly exhibit the impact of Afro-Cuban music, as demonstrated below (see again Example 5). The straight-quaver polyrhythm of most Afro-Latin musics seems more likely to have influenced the rhythmic transformation than the swung-quaver polyrhythm of some African-American music.
Paul Anka, ‘Diana’ (1957), A section, accompaniment. Words and Music by Paul Anka. Copyright © 1957 Pamco Music Inc. All Rights Administered by Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Ltd.
The Latinx American influence on ‘Diana’ was not direct. None of the musicians involved in the recording of the song appear to have been Latinx American. Instead, as Sublette argues, the Latin influence on rock ’n’ roll seems to have been indirect, via what John Storm Roberts usefully describes as ‘American-Latin’ recordings – that is, recordings that were produced by non-Hispanic Americans in a quasi-Latin American style.Footnote 38 That being said, Afro-Latin rhythmic patterns were creatively adapted, rather than straightforwardly adopted, in American-Latin recordings, as illustrated below.
The bassline of ‘Diana’ is a variation of the Afro-Cuban tresillo bass pattern.Footnote 39 Latin American musics influenced the use of tresillo basslines in New Orleans piano compositions from the mid-1800s to early twentieth century – for example, Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Souvenir de Porto Rico from 1859 and the famous ‘Spanish tinge’ (that is, Hispanic-American influence) on Jelly Roll Morton's ‘New Orleans Blues’, which was published in 1925 but was reportedly composed in around 1905.Footnote 40 From 1930 onwards, tresillo basslines were widely disseminated in the United States through the ‘rhumba’ craze that was kick-started by Don Azpiazú's recording of ‘The Peanut Vendor’ (‘El manisero’).Footnote 41 As ‘The Peanut Vendor’ exemplifies, in the Cuban context, tresillo basslines were typically performed as a roots-and-fifths bassline within a repeated harmonic vamp (Example 6a). Tresillo basslines were employed in R&B from at least 1949 in Cuban-influenced recordings such as Dave Bartholomew's rhumba blues ‘Country Boy’.Footnote 42 Bartholomew stated that he borrowed the pattern from a ‘rumba record’.Footnote 43 As ‘Country Boy’ exemplifies, in the US context (in the early 1950s), tresillo bass patterns were typically performed as a triadic bassline within a blues harmonic structure (Example 6b). African-Americans adapted the tresillo to the 12-bar blues context. The tresillo bass pattern in ‘Diana’ appears to have been influenced, perhaps indirectly, by the tresillo basslines of Bartholomew's productions. Specifically, the bassline of ‘Diana’ is doubled in the saxophones, which was an arrangement technique of Bartholomew's, as heard in ‘Country Boy’. However, the ‘Diana’ bass pattern is performed as a roots-and-fifths bassline within a repeated harmonic vamp (I–vi–IV–V) in 32-bar song form. Non-Hispanic Americans therefore adapted the tresillo to the late 1950s rock ’n’ roll context. The bar-level bass pattern of ‘Diana’ seems to be an adaptation of the Afro-Cuban tresillo, as performed in African-American R&B.
Tresillo basslines in: a) Don Azpiazú and his Havana Casino Orchestra, ‘The Peanut Vendor’ (1930); and b) Dave Bartholomew, ‘Country Boy’ ([1949] 2003) – transposed to C major for ease of reading.
The electric guitar pattern in ‘Diana’ is an arpeggiated version of an Afro-Cuban bolero pattern, which is traditionally played on the bongos, maracas, and timbales. Bolero was popularized in the United States through the ‘rhumba’ craze. The bolero percussion pattern can be heard in Xavier Cugat's 1940 recording of ‘Green Eyes’ (‘Aquellos ojos verdes’) (Example 7a). When the pattern was used in mainstream popular music, the Cuban association remained. For example, a syncopated version of the pattern is found in the guitar part of Patti Page's 1950 hit ‘All My Love (Bolero)’, which acknowledges the Cuban influence in its title (Example 7b).Footnote 44 An arpeggiated and truncated version of the bolero pattern appears in the guitar part of the 1954 hit ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ by the Ames Brothers, alongside the full pattern in the bongos (Example 7c). ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ provides a ‘missing link’ between the bolero of Cugat and Page and the arpeggiated electric guitar pattern heard in ‘Diana’. The bolero percussion pattern became characteristic of rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s; for example, it features in the ride cymbal of the Everly Brothers’ 1958 ballad ‘All I Want to Do Is Dream’ and is arpeggiated in the piano in the B section of Roy Orbison's 1964 hit ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’. The bar-level electric guitar pattern in ‘Diana’ seems to be an arpeggiation of an Afro-Cuban bolero percussion pattern, which was seemingly learnt via American-Latin recordings such as ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’.
Bolero percussion pattern in: a) Xavier Cugat, ‘Green Eyes’ (1940; 0:13); b) Patti Page, ‘All My Love (Bolero)’ (1950); and c) the Ames Brothers, ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ (1954).
Finally, I argue that the piano pattern in ‘Diana’ is a rotated version of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern. The standard conga pattern was widely heard in the United States from the late 1940s onwards due to the popularity of Latin jazz and mambo recordings such as Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo's 1948 collaboration ‘Manteca’ (Example 8a). In R&B of the early 1950s, the conga pattern is rotated, with the first and second halves swapped, creating a new conga pattern which is not characteristic of Afro-Cuban music; for example, Lloyd Glenn's 1951 rhumba blues ‘Chica Boo’ (Example 8b).Footnote 45 The heard accents of this rotated conga pattern are clapped in Ruth Brown's 1954 rhumba blues ‘Mambo Baby’. ‘Mambo Baby’ explicitly links the accents of the rotated conga pattern to the ‘mambo’ mentioned in the lyrics (Example 8c). The opening lyric summarizes the plot of the song: ‘all my baby wants to do is the mambo’. At the end of the first verse, Brown sings ‘he goes’, introducing three iterations of the handclapped accents of the rotated conga pattern, before concluding ‘all the time, ’cause that mambo rhythm feels so fine’. Given that the rotation of the two halves of the Afro-Cuban clave pattern is a central part of clave as an organizing principle (or ‘rhythmic key’) in Afro-Cuban music (Example 9), it is not a stretch to suppose that musicians might have subjected other Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns to this rotation technique.Footnote 46 The accents of the rotated conga pattern subsequently became emblematic of rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s; for example, in the snare drum of the Beatles’ 1964 version of ‘Twist and Shout’. The bar-level piano pattern in ‘Diana’ seems to be a rotation of the heard accents of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern, as performed in African-American R&B. Thus, the three bar-level patterns heard in ‘Diana’ (henceforth the ‘Diana’ patterns) appear to be creative adaptations of Afro-Cuban patterns, learnt from American-Latin recordings.
a) Standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern, b) rotated conga pattern, c) heard accents of the rotated conga pattern handclapped in Ruth Brown, ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954; 0:27–44) – ‘H’, ‘T’, ‘S’, and ‘O’ stand for heel, toe, slap, and open, which are four different tones achievable on the conga (the last two of which are the loudest).
a) 3–2 son clave and b) 2–3 son clave – a rotated version of 3–2 son clave.
The ‘Diana’ patterns were influential. Don Costa went on to arrange Carole King's late 1950s singles and King states that she ‘had practically worn out [her] copy of “Diana”’.Footnote 47 Both Costa and King arranged songs written by King in the ‘Diana’ mould, featuring a straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture comprising two or more of the ‘Diana’ patterns – namely, Costa's arrangement of King's 1959 B-side ‘Under the Stars’ and King's arrangement of the Shirelles’ 1960 hit ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’. Moreover, several straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample feature two or more of the ‘Diana’ patterns; for example, ‘It's Now or Never’ and ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’. The straight-quaver polyrhythmic arrangement of ‘Diana’ influenced at least one significant songwriter and producer of rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s and perhaps inspired more.
Other common bar-level patterns of the period seem to have been influenced by Afro-Latin musics. Bass patterns associated with Afro-Cuban bolero, habanera, and Afro-Brazilian baião were widely employed as was the Afro-Cuban cinquillo, Afro-Cuban bell patterns, and patterns that emphasize the accents of son clave. Other American-Latin bar-level patterns were also common, including a tresillo ‘right-hand’ pattern, which uses chordal accents to fill in the gaps between the three onsets of a tresillo bassline, and the rhythm of the cha-cha-chá dance steps (Example 10). In total, 80 per cent of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample feature two or more of the Afro-Latin or American-Latin bar-level patterns illustrated in Example 10 (including small variations of these patterns). While there were other influences on the shift to straight-quaver subdivisions (as Alexander Stewart discusses), the corpus analysis indicates that Afro-Latin musics were the predominant influence on the ‘Diana’ patterns and therefore on the rhythmic transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Note, I am not arguing that most Billboard hits were in a Latin American style by 1961. This was not the case. In the early 1960s, most hits featured an emphatic snare-drum backbeat (which was not characteristic of Afro-Latin styles at the time) and continued to accent the first beat of the bar (which Afro-Cuban styles de-emphasize). Instead, I am arguing that most Billboard hits were in an American-Latin style, like ‘Diana’, by 1961.Footnote 48
Common Afro-Latin and American-Latin bar-level rhythmic patterns in straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample – ‘o’ and ‘+’ indicate open bell and closed bell, respectively.
Reception: ‘rock-a-cha-cha’
In order to ascertain whether the Latin influence on rock ’n’ roll was identified at the time, I interrogated the reception of the 58 songs in the sample that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm, through single reviews published in Billboard and Cash Box from 1950 to 1965.Footnote 49
Although the trade press did not employ rhythmic terminology, it regularly suggested that Afro-Latin musics influenced the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample. Cash Box described ‘Diana’ as ‘sport[ing] an exciting latin-beat arrangement’.Footnote 50 More generally, over a third of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits in the corpus were described as exhibiting a Latin influence by either Billboard or Cash Box. The reviewers did not suggest that any other polyrhythmic styles (such as West African drumming) influenced these straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs. The reception study intimates that the trade press saw Afro-Latin musics as the predominant influence on the adoption of straight-quaver polyrhythm at the time.
Cash Box employed the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ to describe one of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample: the Marcels’ 1961 version of ‘Blue Moon’. ‘Rock-a-cha-cha’ is a portmanteau denoting a mixture of rock ’n’ roll and cha-cha-chá. A content search of Cash Box (via the online database World Radio History) indicates that the publication used the term on 629 of its pages between 1958 and 1966 – two pages a week on average.Footnote 51 All but eleven of these references to ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ were made between 1958 and 1963 – a marginalized period in rock ’n’ roll history, which is discussed later. Cash Box's use of the term peaked in 1961: just less than a third of the total number of references come from this year. The late 1950s and early 1960s also saw a significant Latin influence elsewhere in musical culture with the production of the stage and film versions of West Side Story in 1957 and 1961, respectively. Although Billboard scarcely employed the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’, the publication still posited a Latin influence on straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll, describing Jackie Wilson's 1958 hit ‘Lonely Teardrops’ (which features two of the ‘Diana’ patterns) as a ‘Latinish effort’.Footnote 52 The term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ was also used beyond the trade press. Three songs entitled ‘Rock-a-Cha’ were released between 1958 and 1961 by Irving Ashby, Oscar McLollie & Annette, and Annette Funicello. All three featured straight-quaver polyrhythm. Perhaps most striking is the fact that Cash Box mentioned rock-a-cha-cha more often than either it or Billboard mentioned the related portmanteau rock-a-billy (rock ’n’ roll mixed with hillbilly music). Thus, Cash Box and other sources frequently identified a Latin influence on straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s, peaking in 1961.
Moreover, Cash Box consistently used ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ to denote Latin-influenced rock ’n’ roll that featured straight-quaver polyrhythm, in the style of ‘Diana’.Footnote 53 Cash Box described 39 recordings as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ in 1958 and 1959 – the first two years that the publication employed the term. Of the 36 of these recordings that I could access, 34 feature straight-quaver polyrhythm (94%).Footnote 54 The ‘Diana’ patterns are also the three most common bar-level patterns employed in the ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ recordings. Each of the three patterns features in around a third of these songs. In 1961, two well-known straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits were described as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’: the Drifters’ ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ and Del Shannon's ‘Runaway’.Footnote 55 It seems more than coincidental that ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ peaked in 1961 – the same year that the rhythmic transformation culminated. The trends towards straight-quaver polyrhythm and rock-a-cha-cha appear to have been one and the same.
Both music analysis and critical reception indicate that Afro-Latin musics were the predominant influence on the rhythmic transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Although commentators occasionally identify a Latin influence on the ‘Diana’ patterns,Footnote 56 this is the first study to argue that Afro-Latin musics were the principal influence on a transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm in post-war popular music in the United States.
Sociocultural interpretations
I argue that the Latin influence on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm is a product of cultural cosmopolitanism. I do so by interpreting the two most prominent American-Latin styles: rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha. I focus on these styles because, as demonstrated, American-Latin recordings such as ‘Country Boy’, ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’, and ‘Mambo Baby’ seem to have been the vehicle for the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation.
My use of cosmopolitanism goes ‘against the grain’ in terms of power dynamics. Postcolonial cultural theorists typically employ cosmopolitanism as an alternative to globalization. In that usage, cosmopolitanism is a bottom-up model for understanding instances in which globally subaltern groups (who are often local elites) mix ‘their own music’ with music popularized by globally hegemonic groups in big cities.Footnote 57 Conversely, I use cosmopolitanism as an alternative to the hybridity/appropriation binary. In this article, cosmopolitanism is a way of understanding instances in which either globally hegemonic groups or subaltern groups mix ‘their own music’ with subaltern music in global cities – for example, African Americans and European Americans mixing R&B and rock ’n’ roll with Afro-Latin musics in New York and Los Angeles. My aim is to highlight both the positive and the negative aspects of the engagement of non-Hispanic Americans with Latinx American culture in global cities, as seen in rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha.
The American-Latin styles are neither examples of cultural hybridity nor cultural appropriation. Although rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha are musical hybrids, they cannot be understood in terms of cultural hybridity because Latinx Americans were seldom involved in the production of the styles. Only three of the fifty-eight straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample were written or performed by Latinx American artists.Footnote 58 The styles do not seem to be examples of unjust cultural appropriation for three reasons. First, because rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha were original styles that adapt, rather than simply adopt, Afro-Latin rhythmic patterns – as illustrated by the ‘Diana’ patterns. Second, rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha songs were rarely offensive or harmful, which are usually seen to be necessary for a charge of cultural appropriation.Footnote 59 For instance, Ruth Brown's ‘Mambo Baby’ is the only rhumba blues or rock-a-cha-cha song in the sample that mentions Latinx culture and it does so innocuously. Third, the hybrid styles do not seem to have put Latinx musicians out of work, as the thriving 1950s New York mambo and cha-cha-chá scene demonstrates. The American-Latin styles can neither be theorized as cultural hybridity nor cultural appropriation.
Scholars associate the American-Latin styles with two peoples and two places. Literature on rhumba blues emphasizes African-American performer-songwriters from New Orleans, particularly Professor Longhair – who is considered to have pioneered the style.Footnote 60 Scholarship on rock-a-cha-cha emphasizes Jewish-American staff songwriters from New York, particularly those associated with the Brill Building such as Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.Footnote 61 Although rhumba blues was typically written and performed by African-Americans and rock-a-cha-cha was often recorded in New York, scholars over-emphasize the link between New Orleans and rhumba blues and the link between Jews and rock-a-cha-cha.
There is little evidence to support the claim that rhumba blues originated in New Orleans or the notion that rock-a-cha-cha was unique to Jewish Americans. Jelly Roll Morton's ‘New Orleans Blues’, which was published in 1925, is a precursor to rhumba blues, with its mixture of a tresillo bassline and twelve-bar blues form. However, the earliest and most popular examples of straight-quaver polyrhythmic rhumba blues that I have encountered were recorded in the mid-1940s in cosmopolitan New York and Los Angeles – for example, Cecil Gant's ‘In a Little Spanish Town’ and Slim Gaillard's ‘Cuban Rhumbarini’, which were both recorded in Los Angeles in 1945, as well as Earl Bostic's ‘Earl's Rumboogie’, which was recorded in New York in 1947.Footnote 62 These songs were produced before rhumba blues became associated with Mardi Gras in New Orleans through a string of recordings released between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s. Specifically, the association started with Joe Lutcher's ‘Mardi Gras’, which was recorded in Los Angeles in 1949, before the release of the Mardi Gras anthems such as Professor Longhair's ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’ in 1949, Sugar Boy Crawford's ‘Jock-a-Mo’ in 1954, and the Hawketts’ ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ in 1955. Moreover, none of the eight rhumba blues songs in the sample was recorded in New Orleans. Instead, they were produced in New York, or in one case in Los Angeles – and none of these songs mentions Mardi Gras culture in the lyrics. Similarly, the earliest and most popular examples of rock-a-cha-cha were recorded by gentiles. ‘Diana’ was written and performed by Paul Anka, who is Middle Eastern Canadian, and arranged and produced by Don Costa, who was Italian-American. Although over a quarter of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample were written by Jewish Americans, more of these hits were written by Anglo-Americans and African-Americans – and these were recorded around the country.Footnote 63 Contrary to popular thought, rhumba blues does not seem to have emerged in New Orleans with the piano style of Professor Longhair. Relatedly, rock-a-cha-cha was not exclusively written by Jews. Nevertheless, rhumba blues from New Orleans and rock-a-cha-cha written by Jews are used as examples below because there is more information published about these than there is about other musicians involved in the production of the American-Latin styles.
Cosmopolitanism brings together the two main sociocultural processes that introduced straight-quaver polyrhythm to the United States: transnational migration and transnational circulation. Non-Latinx Americans encountered straight-quaver polyrhythm through both the migration of Latin American people to US cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, and the circulation of Afro-Latin musics around the world, which centred on cosmopolitan cities. Here is a brief summary of this argument. In the early half of the twentieth century, Latin Americans migrated to the United States en masse. The Latinx population increased twelvefold during this period, from 500,000 in 1900 (0.7% of the population) to 6.3 million by 1960 (3.5% of the population).Footnote 64 The emerging Latinx community centred on Puerto Ricans and Mexicans who typically migrated to New York and Los Angeles, respectively – where, as noted, most of the songs in the sample that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm were recorded. Latin Americans migrated to the two cities because they offered unparalleled employment opportunities for both musicians and the low-income workers that made up most of the migrants. New York and Los Angeles were also the twin centres of the US music industry. Latin American migrants to the cities became significant producers and consumers of Afro-Latin musics. Juan Flores argues that Latin American migration influenced the mainstream popularity of Afro-Latin musics in the United States.Footnote 65 Non-Latinx Americans then adopted Afro-Latin rhythm because of both its perceived cultural value and its proven economic value. This argument is made in full in the rest of this section.
The mass migration of Latin Americans to cosmopolitan cities in the United States helped to introduce straight-quaver polyrhythm to non-Latinx Americans. Bauzá claimed that Cuban migration led to the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation. Of course, Cuban migrants such as Pérez Prado, Frank ‘Machito’ Grillo, and Bauzá had a huge impact on US-American music. However, most Latin American migrants to the United States were from Puerto Rico or Mexico, not Cuba. Both Richard Ripani and Ari Katorza suggest that the mass migration of Puerto Ricans (and other Caribbean peoples) to New York from the late 1910s onwards influenced the rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha that was recorded in the city.Footnote 66 As demonstrated below, the mass migration of Mexicans to Los Angeles during the same period also influenced the American-Latin hybrids.
One example of the impact of Latin American migration on the American-Latin styles in cosmopolitan cities is the so-called Brill Building songwriters. Here, I focus on Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller because they wrote more Latin-influenced straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample than anyone else – including hits such as Ben E. King's ‘Stand by Me’ from 1961, which is in the rock-a-cha-cha style. Leiber and Stoller lived and worked alongside Latinx Americans in Los Angeles and then in New York. Stoller attended Belmont High School (a predominantly Mexican-American school) in East Los Angeles (a predominantly Mexican-American neighbourhood). There he played in a band led by Blas Vasquez (a Mexican-American saxophonist) that played a range of styles, including Mexican music.Footnote 67 Meanwhile, Leiber became a fan of Latin music while working in a Filipino restaurant.Footnote 68 In 1953, Leiber and Stoller wrote the rhumba blues ‘Hound Dog’ for Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton. The recording featured Johnny Otis on drums, who had played with Latinx percussionists such as Emmanuel ‘Gaucho’ Vaharandes since 1951 on his own Latin-influenced recordings such as ‘Mambo Boogie’. In 1954, Leiber and Stoller founded the record label Spark in West Hollywood and the Mexican-American saxophonist Gil Bernal's combo was the house band. Leiber and Stoller continued to record rhumba blues with Bernal's combo, such as the Coasters’ 1956 debut single ‘Down in Mexico’.Footnote 69 In 1957, Leiber and Stoller moved to New York where they became associated with the Brill Building (1619 Broadway) and Aldon Music (1650 Broadway). They worked alongside other Jewish rock ’n’ roll songwriting partnerships – such as Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus, and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann as well as individual writers such as Phil Spector and Bert Burns. The songwriters were located within four blocks of the Palladium Ballroom (1698 Broadway) where the ‘big three’ mambo bands of Machito, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez had residencies. Songwriters such as Mort Shuman and Bert Berns regularly attended the Palladium (which had an all-mambo programme) in the same period that they wrote Latin-influenced hits such as ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ and ‘Twist and Shout’.Footnote 70 Indeed, Cynthia Weil, who co-wrote the Righteous Brothers’ Latin-influenced straight-quaver polyrhythmic hit ‘You've Lost that Lovin’ Feeling’ from 1964, stated that Afro-Latin music ‘influenced everybody’ in New York.Footnote 71 Thus, rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha were influenced by the mass migration of Latin Americans to cosmopolitan cities in the United States.
The global circulation of Afro-Latin musics, which centred on cosmopolitan cities, also introduced straight-quaver polyrhythm to non-Latinx Americans. Rhumba blues was influenced by mass-distributed Latin recordings. Stewart points out that the Hawketts’ 1955 rhumba blues ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ features the trademark grunt (‘uh!’) of the commercially successful Cuban bandleader Pérez Prado.Footnote 72 Similarly, Sugar Boy Crawford's 1954 rhumba blues ‘Jock-a-Mo’ features a straight-quaver bar-level saxophone pattern that was popularized by Pérez Prado's 1950 hit ‘Mambo No. 5’. Rock-a-cha-cha was also influenced by the transnational circulation of Afro-Latin musics. The 1959 single ‘There Goes My Baby’, which was written by Leiber and Stoller for the Drifters, features the Brazilian baião bass-register pattern. As Ken Emerson notes, the songwriters learnt this pattern from a Spanish-language song that they heard in an Italian film – namely, ‘El Negro Zumbon’ from Anna, which was distributed to the United States in 1953.Footnote 73 This pattern was widely employed by Brill Building songwriters; for example, Jeff Barry states that it influenced the introduction of the Ronettes’ 1963 hit ‘Be My Baby’, written by Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector.Footnote 74 The influential baião pattern was not brought to the United States by Brazilian migration, it was brought by Italian media.Footnote 75 As well as Latin American migration, rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha were also influenced by the global circulation of Afro-Latin musics, centring on cosmopolitan cities.
The cultural value associated with Afro-Latin musics influenced the adoption of straight-quaver polyrhythm by US-Americans. Stoller stated that he and Leiber drew on Afro-Latin rhythm in the late 1950s and early 1960s for musical reasons, not political reasons:
At the end of the fifties and start of the sixties, Jerry and I started introducing new elements into our records. We weren't radicals with an agenda, just two guys fascinated with certain colors and rhythms. We loved using different percussion instruments. Latin grooves, for example, had always fascinated me.Footnote 76
Leiber and Stoller were ‘fascinated’ by Afro-Latin rhythm and ‘loved’ Latin percussion. This indicates that they valued Afro-Latin musics as culture, not only as commerce.
The economic value associated with Afro-Latin musics also incentivized the adoption of straight-quaver polyrhythm by US-Americans. Rhumba blues was in part economically motivated. As Stewart notes, Art Neville – the vocalist and pianist of the Hawketts – said of ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ ‘[w]e gave it a little mambo snap to cash in on the craze of the day’.Footnote 77 Rock-a-cha-cha was also influenced by commercial considerations. Brian Ward and the contemporaneous journalist Ren Grevatt posit that the music industry recorded rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha in an attempt to extend the longevity of the contemporaneous trends for R&B and rock ’n’ roll respectively.Footnote 78 Both the cultural value ascribed to Afro-Latin musics and the proven economic value of Latin styles influenced the American-Latin hybrids and therefore the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm.
Rock-a-cha-cha songs portrayed the style as cosmopolitan at the time. Annette Funicello's ‘The Rock-a-Cha’ from 1961 does so in two ways. First, it suggests that the style emerged through transnational circulation. The lyrics claim that US goods and culture such as the ‘Fender bass’ and ‘rockin’ beat’ travelled to ‘South America’, where they inspired the locals to mix rock ’n’ roll with supposedly native cha-cha-chá, creating rock-a-cha-cha. The lyrics then state that rock-a-cha-cha was imported back to the United States where it became a craze. Second, the song presents rock-a-cha-cha as a cultural hybrid. Although the lyrics claims that rock-a-cha-cha was created in South America, they seems to liken the hybrid style to the hybrid identities of Latinx Americans in the line ‘señoritas and caballeros wearing denims and Capris’. This origin story of rock-a-cha-cha is fabricated. It appears to be an attempt to translate the cultural value associated with Afro-Latin styles such as cha-cha-chá into economic value, in the form of a craze for rock-a-cha-cha. There is no evidence to support the notion that rock-a-cha-cha was created by Latin Americans in Latin America. Instead, the style seems to have emerged among non-Latinx Americans in the United States. The implication in ‘The Rock-a-Cha’ that mass media influenced the style, with no influence of mass migration, should be disregarded. Nonetheless, ‘The Rock-a-Cha’ indicates that the hybrid style was understood as cosmopolitan at the time.
The fictitious origin story of rock-a-cha-cha also suggests that the Sherman Brothers, who wrote the song, were anxious about the possible perception that rock-a-cha-cha had been contrived by non-Latinx Americans in the United States for economic gain. Although I do not consider rock-a-cha-cha to be an example of cultural appropriation, ‘The Rock-a-Cha’ illustrates that American-Latin songs sometimes portray Latinx culture problematically. The song begins with the line ‘In the land of cha-cha-chá, known as South America’, ignorant of the fact that cha-cha-chá is Cuban and Cuba is in North America. Moreover, ‘The Rock-a-Cha’ offensively employs ‘mock Spanish’ in the line: ‘the cha-cha-chá is for square-os, but the rock-a-cha: gee whiz [pronounced as ‘wheeze’].’Footnote 79 Rock-a-cha-cha was occasionally homogenizing and offensive.
The Latin influence on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm is a product of cosmopolitanism. In 1960, Latinx Americans represented 3.5% of the US population. The music of 3.5% of the population would almost certainly not have influenced a rhythmic transformation of US popular music if both the Latinx population and the US culture industries had not been centred on the same two cosmopolitan cities: New York and Los Angeles. Interpreting the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation as cosmopolitan emphasizes both the musical innovation and the problematic representation that can arise when engaging with ‘someone else's music’, as seen in ‘Diana’ and ‘The Rock-a-Cha’, respectively.
Latinx erasure
In this section, I interrogate when and why the impact of Afro-Latin musics on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm was written out of history. I do so by comparing the critical reception of songs in the sample that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm in the trade press and the rock press – specifically, thirteen early histories of rock ’n’ roll published between 1961 and 1976.Footnote 80 Although neither the trade press nor the rock press discusses the rhythmic transformation explicitly, both posit influences on rock ’n’ roll.
After 1961, the year in which straight-quaver polyrhythm became the norm, the popular-music press rarely identified a Latin influence on rock ’n’ roll. Between 1950 and 1961, the trade press (either Billboard or Cash Box) suggested that Afro-Latin musics influenced half of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample, for which at least one review was accessible. Conversely, between 1962 and 1965, the trade publications only suggested that Latin styles influenced three out of the twenty-one straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits in the corpus. Similarly, after 1961, Cash Box used the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ less and less often, from a peak of 193 references in that year to one reference in 1964 and no references by 1967. This trend is also seen in the rock press. Although ‘Diana’ is mentioned in eight early histories of rock ’n’ roll published after 1961, only one posits a Latin influence on the song's rhythm.Footnote 81 The impact of Latin American music on rock ’n’ roll (and therefore the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm) was written out of history throughout the 1960s. As noted, this erasure remains in effect to this day, despite Bauzá's intervention in 1988.
Ned Sublette describes this phenomenon as ‘amnesia’.Footnote 82 The term ‘amnesia’ implies that the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation was forgotten due to ‘landscape amnesia’ or ‘creeping normalcy’, in which a significant change occurs so gradually that it is imperceptible. But these terms do not explain why historians have not overlooked the African-American influence on previous rhythmic transitions, such as the 1950s trend towards the ‘the big beat’ (i.e., emphatic snare-drum backbeats).Footnote 83 ‘Amnesia’ suggests that the process was not influenced by social factors such as race or gender. However, it seems almost certain that this substantial Latin impact on US popular culture would not have been ‘forgotten’ if popular music history was principally written by Latinx Americans.Footnote 84 It is the white male authors of rock ’n’ roll history that are primarily responsible for the supposed ‘amnesia’.Footnote 85 The term ‘erasure’ therefore seems more suitable. Anton Allahar defines erasure as ‘the act of neglecting, looking past, minimizing, ignoring or rendering invisible an other’.Footnote 86 My intention is not to imply that every commentator, of any race, who has overlooked Latin influences on rhythmic trends in US popular music is a bigot. Erasure is understood in this article as a product of systemic prejudice, not individual prejudice.
There seem to be three main factors influencing the erasure of the Latin influence on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm: the Black/white binary paradigm of race, the ‘Christ-like’ narrative of rock ’n’ roll history, and the ‘tinge’ metaphor of Latin influence. Sublette posits several explanations for this erasure, the most persuasive of which is the Black/white binary paradigm of race. The Black/white paradigm is a conception of race in binary terms: Black or white.Footnote 87 The binary marginalizes Latinx American peoples and cultures, which are typically understood as neither Black nor white in the United States.Footnote 88 Reebee Garofalo identifies the Black/white binary in the conventional narrative that rock ’n’ roll is a product of Black rhythm & blues and white country & western. Garofalo argues that this marginalizes Latin influences on rock ’n’ roll.Footnote 89 I argue that the reductionist equation that ‘R&B + C&W = R&R’ also encourages historians to overlook the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation. Nine of the early histories of rock ’n’ roll mention Elvis Presley's cover of Big Mama Thornton's ‘Hound Dog’. But none mentions the indirect influence of Afro-Cuban music on the song,Footnote 90 which was originally performed as a rhumba blues by both Thornton and Presley.Footnote 91 The Black/white paradigm of race seems to have contributed to the erasure of the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation.Footnote 92
The history of rock ’n’ roll is typically told with what I call a Christ-like narrative: that is, a narrative of ‘birth’, ‘death’, and ‘resurrection’. Rock ’n’ roll was supposedly ‘born’ with Elvis Presley in 1955, had ‘died’ by 1959, and was ‘resurrected’ by the Beatles in 1964.Footnote 93 Nine early histories of rock ’n’ roll exhibit this Christ-like narrative. Rock ’n’ roll is either said to have died from ‘natural causes’ or to have been ‘murdered’. The ‘natural causes’ explanation is that rock ’n’ roll died between 1957 and 1959 when Little Richard joined the ministry, Elvis Presley enlisted in the army, Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin (once-removed), Chuck Berry was imprisoned, and Buddy Holly died in a plane crash – ‘the day the music died’ in Don McLean's 1971 hit ‘American Pie’.Footnote 94 The ‘murder’ explanation is that rock ’n’ roll was ‘killed’ by the music industry.Footnote 95 In his 1973 book, Mike Jahn claims that ‘Diana’ is responsible for the supposed ‘lean period’ in rock ’n’ roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s:
The years 1956 and 1957 comprised the First Golden Era of rock, but everything must end and by the latter part of 1957 one was able to suspect that a lean period was setting in. Seven lean years would pass before a musical group would appear which had the same aura as did Presley at the height of his power [the Beatles]. In any decline there has to be a starting point, and I prefer the release of ‘Diana,’ by Paul Anka.Footnote 96
Jahn goes on to refer to Anka as the ‘prototype’ for the teen idols that dominated this period. Later, he describes rock ’n’ roll as being ‘dead’ in this era.Footnote 97 Thus, Jahn effectively alleges that ‘Diana’ killed rock ’n’ roll.
The Christ-like narrative is a retroactive application of the rock/pop distinction of the late 1960s to rock ’n’ roll of the 1950s and early 1960s. This mass-culture critique casts mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll as art and rock ’n’ roll from 1959 to 1963 as mass culture. This view can be seen in both early histories of rock ’n’ roll and in scholarship that is otherwise revisionist. The rock historian Greg Shaw describes Anka's songs as being ‘unbelievably mechanical’, evoking the archetypical mass-culture image of a Fordist production line, while Albin Zak refers to the teen idols as ‘packaged’.Footnote 98 This mass-culture critique is also gendered. Both the rock historian Albert Raisner and the scholars Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie refer to the supposed ‘emasculation’ of rock ’n’ roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s.Footnote 99 The Christ-like narrative leads critics and scholars to deny rock ’n’ roll status to popular music of this period, which was described as rock ’n’ roll at the time. Both Charlie Gillett and Allan Moore maintain that teen idols such as Paul Anka did not represent ‘real’ rock ’n’ roll.Footnote 100 The Christ-like narrative represents a gendered mass-culture critique of the period from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, in which Latin-influenced rock ’n’ roll such as ‘Diana’ and ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ led to straight-quaver polyrhythm becoming the norm. The Christ-like narrative of rock ’n’ roll had a hand in the erasure of the Latin influence on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm.
When the impact of Latin American music on the United States is identified, it is typically cast as a superficial ‘tinge’ – rather than a structural element, as Bauzá claimed. The tinge metaphor goes back to 1938, when Jelly Roll Morton told folklorist Alan Lomax that ‘you've got to have these little tinges of Spanish in it, in order to play real good jazz.’Footnote 101 John Storm Roberts popularized this metaphor in the title of his 1979 book The Latin Tinge. The phrase ‘Latin tinge’ has become associated with this area of scholarship.Footnote 102 Although the research of Roberts and others often argues that the impact of Latin American music on the United States is substantial, the presence of the word ‘tinge’ in the titles of such studies undermines this argument by implying that these Latin influences are surface-level.
The impact of Afro-Latin styles on US music is perhaps understood as superficial because Afro-Latin musics are associated with passing fads in the United States. Both the contemporaneous trade press and historicist scholars understand rock-a-cha-cha as an inconsequential craze. In 1958, Ren Grevatt wrote with exasperation in Billboard that ‘[w]e have seen plenty of the rock-a-cha-cha, rock-calypso and some rock-a-hula. It is possible in this crazy business that we will see such things as rock-a-folkas, rock-a-polkas, rock-a-sambas and maybe even rock-a-Indian war dances.’Footnote 103 In his 2010 book, Albin Zak cites Grevatt's article and refers to rock-a-cha-cha, rock-calypso, and rock-a-hula as ‘oddities’.Footnote 104 Even the Cash Box editors who popularized the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ saw it as a joke. Irv Lichtman claims that his colleague Ira Howard coined the style descriptor and laughs, stating that ‘[i]t was really part of the fun’.Footnote 105 Both the ‘tinge’ metaphor and the notion that rock-a-cha-cha was a passing fad cast the impact of Latin American music on the United States as superficial. The ‘tinge’ metaphor seems likely to have played a part in the erasure of the Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation.
Conclusion: more than just a tinge
Mario Bauzá was right. A significant impact of Afro-Cuban music on a fundamental change in the rhythm of twentieth-century music has been written out of history. The corpus analysis establishes that a transition from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm occurred in US popular music, culminating in 1961. Both music analysis and a reception study indicate that Afro-Latin musics (particularly Afro-Cuban styles) were the predominant musical influence on the transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Reception history reveals that the Latin influence on rock ’n’ roll was erased by the 1960s rock press because of the Black/white binary paradigm of race as well as gendered and racialized notions of mass culture. However, Bauzá overlooked the impact of Latin American musics and peoples who are not Cuban on the rhythmic transformation. Afro-Brazilian music and both Puerto-Rican and Mexican migration also influenced the trends, as did the global circulation of Afro-Latin musics. The Latin influence on the rhythmic transition is not simply the influence of one nation on another. It is a product of cosmopolitanism – principally, the cosmopolitanism of New York and Los Angeles, which are hubs for both the Latinx American population and the global circulation of culture.
As Robert Palmer postulated, ‘the history of American music since World War Two is in need of serious revision’.Footnote 106 Afro-Latin musics influenced a rhythmic transformation that bisects the twentieth century, separating the eras in which popular music was dominated by the swung-quaver monorhythm of jazz (c. 1920–45) and the straight-quaver polyrhythm of rock and soul (from the 1960s onwards).Footnote 107 This challenges the widely held notion in Latinx studies that the Latin influence on US-American music waned in the 1960s.Footnote 108 The culmination of a Latin-influenced rhythmic transformation of US popular music by 1961 indicates that the 1960s is the decade that exhibits the greatest, rather than the smallest, impact of Latin American music on the United States. This project is also pertinent to Black-music studies. The transition to straight-quaver polyrhythm facilitated a subsequent trend towards semiquaver polyrhythm, which has characterized African-American music from 1970s funk, disco, and jazz fusion through to twenty-first-century hip hop and electronic dance music. Scholars have not recognized that rock-a-cha-cha ‘polyrhythm-icized’ popular music years before funk.Footnote 109
This research responds to calls to decolonize music studies. In his 2023 book On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone, Philip Ewell writes that ‘DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] focuses on BIPOC figures who have been erased by white structures, while antiracism focuses on the anti-BIPOC activities undertaken by white structures that kept whiteness in power.’Footnote 110 This article goes beyond equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI in the UK) to anti-racism and feminism. It promotes EDI in that it demonstrates that a significant Latin American impact on a rhythmic transformation of US popular music has been erased by rock historians. It is anti-racist and feminist in that it focuses on the (sometimes subtle) anti-Latinx and misogynistic narratives that have been propagated by white men that contributed to the erasure of this Latin influence.Footnote 111
This study is also timely. Latinx Americans now represent a fifth of the US population, following a tenfold increase between 1960 and 2020, and are now the largest ethnic minority in the nation.Footnote 112 We cannot continue to marginalize the impact of Latin American music on the United States. Moreover, Latinx immigrants are often vilified, as seen in Donald Trump's racist comments.Footnote 113 Of course, neither this article nor scholarship in the arts and humanities more generally can put a stop to the denigration of Latinx Americans. However, this study illustrates one of many significant contributions made by Latin American migrants to US culture and thereby helps to counteract Latinx erasure.
To summarize, this article draws three conclusions. The influences on rock ’n’ roll are not Black and white: they are Afro-Latin too. Rock ’n’ roll was not ‘emasculated’ and ‘killed’ in the late 1950s and early 1960s: it was Afro-Latinized. The impact of Latin American music and migration on the United States is not a superficial ‘tinge’: it prompted a paradigm shift in the rhythm of twentieth-century music.Footnote 114
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