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Where does Cha-cha-chá (music and dance) come from?
Cha-cha-chá comes from Havana, Cuba. The violinist Enrique Jorrín created it in the early 1950s by making dance-hall music easier to dance to, and within a few years it had spread to Mexico, the United States and Western Europe.
Music made easier to dance
Jorrín, born in 1926 in Pinar del Río, grew up in Havana and took up the violin at 12. He played in charangas, Cuban dance bands with flute and strings, and later joined Orquesta América. At its dances he noticed that many people struggled with the highly syncopated rhythms of the danzón-mambo, so he wrote melodies marked strongly on the first downbeat, with as little syncopation as possible. In 1951 he composed 'La engañadora' in Havana.
A name from the dancers' feet
When Orquesta América played the new pieces at the Silver Star Club in Havana, dancers improvised a triple step, and the name cha-cha-chá is said to copy the sound of their feet grazing the floor. In March 1953 the band recorded 'La engañadora', with 'Silver Star', whose refrain carried the name, on the other side. The single sold an estimated 13,000 copies by 1954, unheard of for its Cuban label. In Cuba, cha-cha-chá soon outshone the mambo and the danzón, and the craze moved on to Mexico City.
Why people say Brazil
By 1955 the music and the dance were popular across Latin America, the United States and Western Europe, helped by television and long-playing records. Today the cha-cha is one of the five Latin American dances of international ballroom competitions, so its Cuban birthplace is easy to forget. Yet the Cuban musicologist Olavo Alén calls it a derivative of the danzón, keeping the danzón's structure and its solo flute.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Cha cha chá (music) ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Cha cha cha (dance) ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › La engañadora ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Enrique Jorrín ↗ · rae.es ↗
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