Mambo for MO

The composer says: Several musical threads led to my writing this piece of music to celebrate my friend Matanya Ophee’s (AKA MO) 80th birthday - a life lived with the guitar. Jelly Roll Morton once asserted: “In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning; I call it, for jazz.” Over the last couple of years I moved back to Jelly Roll Morton’s city: New Orleans, home of my adolescence and reacquainted myself with the tinges of Spanish in its rich musical heritage. One of these pieces was the Mardi Gras Mambo, an iconic song frequently played during Mardi Gras and, in David Newman’s reworking of the lyrics, at the New Orleans Saints football games as the Super Bowl Mambo. Uncited sources on both Wikipedia and Essortment say the word Mambo means “conversation with the gods” in Kikongo, the language spoken by Central African slaves taken to Cuba where it became the name for a musical form and a dance style that developed originally in Cuba in the able hands of Cachao’s (Bassist Orestes Lopez) tune: Danzon Mambo. This rhythmic style became famous in the 1950’s following its use in dance bands in Mexico and through New Orleans to the United States. The infectiousness of the New Orleans re-interpretation of the Mambo’s ostinato bass line and the reaction of people who are readily moved to dance when they hear it spoke to me of dance and celebration. This led me to choose some of this piece’s characteristics and title for this piece: Mambo for MO