Spaces and Places

This chapter provides a summary of the most important venues in New York where musicians have performed danzón, rhumba/son, mambo, chachachá, and pachanga. Aside the Palladium, other venues operating in the 1950s and ‘60s are examined in terms of the types of Latin music played in them, documenting the experiences of performers of Cuban dance music in The Bronx, Spanish Harlem, downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Catskills resort venues. The usual narrative of the Palladium as ‘home of the mambo’ is not negated but the narrative is expanded so that the relationships between the various performance scenes can be evaluated more fully. In the latter part of this chapter the history of the dance hall from 1947 to 1966 is examined in terms of the mambo big bands, conjuntos, and charanga bands that performed there, drawing on the perspectives of musicians who experienced live performances there.