The mambo first appeared under the name Diablo (Devil), when the tres player Arsenio Rodríguez incorporated elements of the son montuno into the danzón (at the time called Ritmo Nuevo). This new style was marked out by the tumbadora, the piano's syncopation and the trumpets playing jazz, while the tres highlighted the rhythm.
Other musicians took the same road, such as the pianists and arrangers René Hernández and Emilio "Bebo" Valdés, but it was the pianist and orchestra director Dámaso Pérez Prado who mastered the mambo synthesis, freeing the montuno of the ritmo nuevo parts, making it totally independent. The rhythm is syncopated. The saxophones play the syncopations, the trumpets the melody and the double bass the accompaniment together with the tumbadoras and the bongos. Pérez Prado, known as the "Mambo king", made various recordings in Mexico for the RCA-Victor, in which the influence of swing is particularly evident.
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