MIAMI — Cuban bassist and composer Israel “Cachao” Lopez, who is credited with pioneering the mambo style of music, died Saturday. He was 89.
Known simply as Cachao, the Grammy-winning musician had fallen ill in the past week and died surrounded by family members at Coral Gables Hospital, spokesman Nelson Albareda said.
Cachao left communist Cuba and came to the United States in the early 1960s. He continued to perform into his late 80s, including a performance after the death of trombonist Generoso Jimenez in September 2007.
Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia, who made a 1993 documentary about the bassist’s career, credited Cachao with being a major influence in Cuban musical history and said his passing marked the end of an era.
“Cachao is our musical father. He is revered by all who have come in contact with him and his music,” Garcia said in a statement Saturday. “Maestro … you have been my teacher, and you took me in like a son. So I will continue to rejoice with your music and carry our traditions wherever I go, in your honor.”
Cachao was born in Havana in 1918 to a family of musicians. A classically trained bassist, he began performing with the Havana symphony orchestra as a teenager, working under the baton of visiting guest conductors, such as Herbert von Karajan, Igor Stravinsky and Heitor Villa-Lobos, during his nearly 30-year career with the orchestra.
He also wrote hundreds of songs in Cuba for bands and orchestras, many based on the classic Cuban music style known as son.
He and his late brother, multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez, created the mambo in the late 1930s. The mambo emerged from their improvisational work with the danzon, an elegant musical style that lends itself to slow dancing.
“The origins of ‘mambo’ happened in 1937,” Cachao said in a 2004 interview with The San Francisco Chronicle. “My brother and I were trying to add something new to our music and came up with a section that we called danzon mambo. It made an impact and stirred up people. At that time our music needed that type of enrichment.”
The mambo was embraced early on and Cuban composers and jazz musicians have tweaked it over the years. It also influenced the development of salsa music.
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