House Mambo Built

Here is a compilation of musical numbers inspired from archaic melodia reinvented in myriad styles for almost every occasion providing booze and a game of chance, either of the heart or pocket, is involved. Mambo sings to and of the moment, the heightened recognition of soaring spirit told, not in deep reflection or tempered reception but in immediate activity where impulses rule and caution finds itself cast to the sea breeze of the summer night. If it conjures an atmosphere of frivolity it does so not at the expense of gravity's rainbow as it propels the listener, the dancer, the musician, headfirst into a celebration at its very height. It lavishes the senses with an unspoken narrative without beginnings or endings only the undying moment sustained in between. The exotic albeit polished nature of modern mambo since it first began its popular migration from Latin America to the cities of North America and Europe has created appeal among the Nouveau Riche as it has the poor and underprivileged. The music, in many ways, works as an act of defiance, as if created in opposition to wretchedness, ennui and self-pity. A backbeat which survives and keeps alive its origins from Africa speaks to the legs and the arms and the hips. It encourages movement even if only through imagery. Because of its many guises mambo easily adapts as a soundtrack. It suggests paradise lost, found and almost certainly in these days of cultural repossession, salvaged. Above all things it's a mood especially given the persuasive power that it possesses in both setting and creating one. This collection you hold in your hand spans four decades and style. From dancehall, rock n roll, big band and cha-cha-cha, there's something here, as the bartender will tell you, for every celebratory occasion. Here icons of jazz Stan Kenton, Ella Fitzgerald and Sonny Rollins sit comfortably beside rockers like Johnny Otis and Bill Haley, vixens such as Eartha Kitt, Josephine Baker and Latin stars like Edmondo Ross and Carmen Miranda. Together they play as equals slaves only to the rapture of the melody and the drunken cadence of the beat either accepting of or unknowing of the hint of revolution in the air.