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Cachao passes but his music and legacy live on
Israel Lopez " Cachao"
September 14, 1918 – March 22, 2008
Cachao passed on recently but his legacy lives on in the Latino music scene. Just who is the Master of Mambo?
The master of Mambo and Cuban "Tumbao", Cachao (pronounced kah-CHOW) was a Cuban mambo musician, bassist and composer, who has helped bring mambo music to popularity in the United States of America in the early 1950s. He was born in Havana, Cuba. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, won several Grammy Awards, and has been described as "the inventor of the mambo". He is considered a master of descarga (Latin jam sessions).
Cachao was born into a family of musicians, many of them bassists -- around 40 and counting in his extended family. As an 8-year-old bongo player, he joined a children's septet that included a future famous singer and bandleader, Roberto Faz. A year later, already on bass, he provided music for silent movies in his neighborhood theater, in the company of a pianist who would become a true superstar, the great cabaret performer Ignacio Villa, known as Bola de Nieve.
His parents made sure he was classically trained, first at home and then at a conservatory. In his early teens he was already playing contrabass with the Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana, under the baton of guest conductors including Herbert von Karajan, Igor Stravinsky and Heitor Villa-Lobos.
For a while, he had two distinct musical personae. In the New York salsa scene he was revered as a music god, with homage concerts dedicated to him, and records of his music produced by Cuban-music collector René López. In Miami, he was an ordinary working musician who would play quinceañeras and weddings, or back dance bands in the notorious Latin nightclubs of the Miami Vice era.
In the '90s, García produced the recordings known as Master Sessions and big concerts honoring his legacy. Since then, Cachao became again a household word among Cubans and his reputation continued to grow.
Lopez has won several Grammy Awards for both his own work and his contributions on albums by Latin music stars, including Gloria Estefan. In 1994 he won a Grammy for Master Sessions Volume 1. In 2003 he won a Latin Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album together with Bebo and Patato Valdés for El Arte Del Sabor. Lopez won a further Grammy in 2005, again for his own work, ¡Ahora Si!.
Ahora si, Cachao! A fiestar con Celia, Tito y todos los grandes!
Biography Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cachao_L%C3%B3pez
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