Pachanga
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A fast, festive Cuban dance craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s that fused the charanga's flute-and-violin sweetness with a bouncy, hopping rhythm and merengue-like lilt, meant for an exuberant, kicking couples dance. Charanga instrumentation — flute, violins, piano, güiro, timbales and bass — carries breezy, catchy melodies and shouted party interjections at a bright, up-tempo strut. Compared to the danzón and cha-cha-chá it is looser and more raucous, built for youthful abandon on the dancefloor. The mood is joyous, playful and celebratory.
History
The pachanga sprang from Cuban composer Eduardo Davidson's 1959 song of that name, first recorded by Orquesta Sublime, and it swept Cuba and then New York as the charanga boom took hold at the turn of the 1960s. In New York, Charlie Palmieri, Johnny Pacheco and Joe Quijano — crowned the 'King of Pachanga' — led the fad at venues like the Palladium, and Ray Barretto's 1962 charanga smash 'El Watusi' became the first Latin record to cross onto the US pop charts. The craze burned out quickly by 1963 as it merged into the broader charanga-and-boogaloo scene, but it left its mark on salsa's rhythmic vocabulary and the phrase 'hacer una pachanga' as a synonym for a wild party.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge (1979)
- César Miguel Rondón, The Book of Salsa (2008)
- Max Salazar, Mambo Kingdom (2002)