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Though located on Broadway and Fifty-third Street, an area famous for music and theater, the Palladium, an immense ballroom capable of holding a thousand couples on its dance floor, was in decline by 1947. It seldom filled to capacity as fewer and fewer white couples went there to dance the fox-trot, tango, and some of the old swing, the popular swaying rhythm that was easy on the feet and ears of its audience . At that time the Palladium’s manager, a man named Moore, faced the challenge of turning the situation around and attracting dancers back to the ballroom. He contacted Federico Pagani, one of the city’s most important promoters of Caribbean music, who was then the director of his own band, the Conjunto Ritmo. Moore felt that the solution was to be found in drawing in the Latino community, even though he feared a different problem could result: the blacks also would come down to Broadway with, in his mind, all of their bad habits, knives, and unbridled impulses. By1947,onlyoneblackLatinorchestra—MachitoandhisAfro-Cubans— had made its way into those venues of Broadway populated by white and predominantly Jewish dance audiences, and it did so with comfort and prestige. This orchestra had performed for several seasons at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills, and it had been able to please all audiences. In the midst of the bebop boom, Machito and his Afro-Cubans had had the luxury of merging Cuban rhythms with the harmonies and phrasings of avant-garde jazz. The result was the famous, and misnamed, “Latin jazz,” a direct creation of Mario Bauzá, musical director of the Afro-Cubans and, as he himself put it, “father of the newborn.” Moore talked with Pagani and Bauzá. They agreed that Machito was the ideal alternative, the perfect solution for bringing the Caribbean to Broadway . But the risks were still high: the “lowlife,” no matter what, would be the dancing audience. Believing that this could jeopardize a great opportunity for Latin music, Pagani suggested proceeding carefully and taking serious precautions. Their idea was to open a club, a special club that would offer Sunday afternoon dance concerts for the Hispanic community . Mario Bauzá christened it the Blen Blen Club. “Blen blen” was the name of a successful musical composition by Chano Pozo, an extraordinary Cuban percussionist who, while playing with Dizzie Gillespie’s band, had revolutionized the rhythmic and percussive concepts of the jazz trends of bebop. Pozo had been close friends with Bauzá ever since Miguelito Valdez had introduced the two of them in New 2 Sålså Ze ro York, and it was Bauzá who then connected Pozo and Gillespie. Pozo had no objection to giving the new dance club the name of his composition, and so this meaningful name brought together, albeit briefly, the best of jazz with the best music of Cuba. Given that the New York community was basically Puerto Rican, it was somewhat odd that Cuba was the one country to impose its dance rhythms and dominate the scene. The first dance matinee succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. The Palladium once again filled to capacity. For the first time ever, Latin orchestras were the stars, not the uncomfortable warm-up acts they had been reduced to by U.S. promoters of that era. The essence of the music was no longer hidden; the dancers perfectly deciphered the hidden codes of the authentic Caribbean dance, and the musicians, finally, could let themselves go. It took only a couple of weeks for the promoters to realize that the Sunday dances were not enough. They extended the Blen Blen Club hours to include Wednesday nights, and within a year, the Palladium was devoted exclusively to Afro-Cuban music. Machito’s orchestra, founded by Mario Bauzá in 1941, set the standards . It represented a perfectly fluid convergence of all the qualities that enlivened the city. Leader of the Cuban musicians in New York, Bauzá had arrived in 1930 as a member of the Azpiazu Orchestra, the same band with which the very famous Antonio Machín had performed. For ten years, Bauzá had worked with the most diverse and important jazz orchestras, developing his own styles and trends. In 1941, after leaving Cab Calloway’s band, he started one of his own. Now Bauzá called on his childhood friend, Frank Grillo—known as “Machito”—and asked him to fuel the project and serve as its public image. It was “the most beautiful marriage ever,” as...

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