Mario Bauzá - born April 28, 1911, in Havana, Cuba - was a Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz musician and arranger. As the music director for brother-in-law Machito’s band the Afro-Cubans (also known as Machito and His Orchestra), he is acknowledged as one of the first musicians to introduce Cuban music to the United States. With his composition “Tangá” (1951), he was the first to explore modal harmony through a jazz arrangement perspective. A child prodigy, Mario Bauzá studied clarinet and played with the Havana Symphony by the age of 11. In 1926, he made his first visit to New York and was inspired to play the saxophone. When he traveled back home to Cuba, he vowed to return to New York to play jazz. In 1930, he finally relocated to New York and spent many years playing and arranging with jazz greats such as Chick Webb, Don Redman, and Cab Calloway. Mario Bauzá is responsible for introducing new talents like Ella Fitzgerald, Tito Puente, and Dizzy Gillespie to a larger audience. In 1941, Mario Bauzá joined his brother-in-law Machito’s orchestra as music director and remained by his side for the next 35 years. Early on, he encouraged Machito to add jazz solos to the group’s repertoire. This style of music became known as cubop. In 1976, the year he left Machito’s orchestra, Mario Bauzá collaborated with Machito’s sister Graciela on the album La Botánica. Mario Bauzá remained active until his death on July 11, 1993, at the age of 82. After his death, three posthumous albums were released - Afro-Cuba: The Jazz Roots of Cuban Rhythm (1995), Afrocuban Jazz (2003), and My Time Is Now (2006) - and his career was given a reappraisal, bringing him recognition for his important contributions to jazz, latin jazz, and Afro-Cuban music.
