The “Othering” of Latin Jazz

Abstract

This chapter discusses various ways the Caribbean and Latin American music styles continued to share a common history with jazz from the 1940s to the 1960s, intersecting, cross-influencing, and at times seeming inseparable, as each has played seminal roles in the other’s development. Three case studies are discussed: the collaboration of Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, the Jazz Samba recording by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz, and Mongo Santamaría’s “Watermelon Man” recording. In much of the jazz literature, these musicians and their seminal roles have been diminished or downright ignored. This chapter explores the reasons for these omissions and the systematic “othering” of Latin jazz. It examines the forces at play in their continued exclusion; explores how this omission is tied to the economic marginalization of jazz, racism, nationalism, tensions between art and popular music, and canon construction; and identifies what is at stake when Latin jazz is included.