Descarga

Descarga
Stylistic origins	Son cubano, filin, rumba, mambo
Cultural origins	Havana music scene (mid-1950s)
Typical instruments	Piano, double bass, percussion section, horn section, tres, flute, violin
Derivative forms	Salsa dura
Regional scenes
Havana and New York City
Other topics
Music of Cuba - Jam session

A descarga (literally discharge in Spanish) is an improvised jam session consisting of variations on Cuban music themes, primarily son montuno, but also guajira, bolero, guaracha and rumba. The genre is strongly influenced by jazz and it was developed in Havana during the 1950s. Important figures in the emergence of the genre were Cachao, Julio Gutiérrez, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín and Niño Rivera in Cuba, and Tito Puente in New York. Originally, descargas were promoted by record companies such as Panart, Maype and Gema under the label Cuban jam sessions. From the 1960s, the descarga format was usually adapted by large salsa ensembles, most notably the Fania All-Stars.

During the 1940s, the term descarga was commonly used in the music scenes of Cuba to refer to performances of jazz-influenced boleros in an improvised manner. This was part of the so-called filin (feeling) movement spearheaded by artists such as José Antonio Méndez, César Portillo de la Luz, and Luis Yánez. This style was inherited by musicians such as Bebo Valdés and Frank Emilio Flynn who explored the combination of jazz and Cuban forms into the 1950s. At this time however, the term descarga began to be used in a different way to describe jam sessions based on the son montuno and other Afro-Cuban rhythms. The incipient mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz scene found in New York during the 1940s was also a catalyst of the development of descargas, with artists such as Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Tito Puente performing extended jams with Afro-Cuban motifs.

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Wikipedia