Los Tres Grandes

This chapter examines the different manifestations of mambo in Havana and New York to demonstrate the musical connections between the big bands, son conjuntos, and charangas across three decades of regular Cuban dance music performance. The Palladium, in addition to the music venues in the Bronx, provided various opportunities for New York-based musicians to create their own versions of Cuban dance music. Recordings by mambo big bands are analyzed alongside Arsenio Rodríguez’s mambo diablos and Antonio Arcaño’s charanga composition “Mambo” to outline the historic connections between these formats.