Derived from a rhythmic verse of
the Cuban danzón, the mambo
appeared for the first time in 1938 in a danzón
named Mambo de Orestes López. Just like
other Caribbean dances, the way of dancing the
mambo comes from the son.
Pérez
Prado re-arranged the musical structure with
arrangements inspired in those of the jazz orchestras,
introducing trumpets and saxophones with Cuban
percussion, thus creating this new rhythm whose
greatest hit was "Qué rico el mambo".
The mambo is one of the fastest tropical dances
and shares a common factor with the bolero:
in both the actual movement begins on the second
beat, which makes them much more sensual, along
with the characteristic hip movements of the Caribbean
dances. As the original mambo was passed down from one generation to the next, it became naturalised that
the dance startedon the first beat rather than on the
second.
That's the reason why there are many people who dance
the mambo by taking three steps on the first three
beats with a pause on the fourth beat. Similar to other tropical dances, the
mambo can be danced with the bodies close
together, although it is more common to dance it separately due to
the dance’s vitality and difficulty. The mambo tends to be a very
lively dance with many turns but never requires
dancers to move over a larger part of the dance
floor.
