HOME PAGE MY TIMES TODAY'S PAPER VIDEO MOST POPULAR TIMES TOPICS My Account Welcome, laiacabrera Log Out Help Music Arts All NYT WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS ART & DESIGN BOOKS DANCE MOVIES MUSIC TELEVISION THEATER Cachao, Mambo’s Inventor, Dies at 89 More Articles in Arts » By JON PARELES Published: March 24, 2008 Get UrbanEye by E-Mail E-MAIL Sign up to find out all you need to know about New York, every weekday. See Sample Correction Appended PRINT
[email protected] REPRINTS Change E-mail Address | Privacy Policy Israel Cachao López, the Cuban bassist and composer who was a pioneer of the mambo, died on Saturday in Coral Gables, Fla. He was SAVE 89 and lived in Coral Gables. SHARE Enlarge This Image The cause was complications resulting from kidney failure, said Nelson Albareda, whose company, Eventus, was his manager. Cachao, as he was universally known, transformed the rhythm of Cuban music when he and his brother, the pianist and cellist Orestes López, extended and accelerated the final section of the stately Cuban danzón into the mambo. “My brother and I would say to each other, ‘Mambea, mambea ahí,’ which meant to add swing to that part,” he said in a 2006 interview with The Miami Herald. The springy mambo bass lines Cachao created in the late 1930’s — simultaneously driving and playful — became a Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos foundation of modern Cuban music, of the salsa that grew MOST POPULAR Cachao playing at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York in 2006.