Point at which jazz rhythm section went latin

[neueliteratur]

Hello,

Contemporary jazz often has a "latin" rhythm section. I'm referring to folks like Mehldau, Metheny etc.

And I was wondering in which time period in the history of jazz this transition from swing rhythm section (Miles, Coltrane) to latin happened?

[GeckoYamori]

Well, it could be something completely unrelated, but some time around the 30s/40s I think there was a big ruckus between radio stations and record labels. The labels thought they were being cheated out of money by radio playing their records, and there hadn't been any royalty system worked out yet. So they simply banned radio from broadcasting their content. To fill the void from this, radio stations started broadcasting imported Latin American records, and this is how the Latin influences were culturally infused.

[Winstontaneous]

Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" in the late 40's was one of the first songs by a major jazz player to feature Afro-Cuban rhythms. Brazilian bossa nova arose in the mid-50s and soon influenced jazz artists like Stan Getz. I don't think it's correct to say that jazz "went Latin" - more that these rhythms became part of the standard vocabulary of jazz.

[jopy]

Jelly Roll Morton used to incorporate what he called the "Latin tinge" from New Orleans into his music. I would guess, based on this, that it's always been in there. It's a hybrid/fusion genre by nature. As noted previously, many jazz rhythm sections incorporate both swing and Latin rhythms. I'm not sure if this is what you're referencing, but there was a tendency to incorporate a modification of the standard jazz rhythm section by using straight 8th notes without an explicit attempt to sound like Latin jazz in the 1960's, which is what you'd hear in some of the modal styles.