“Our Buzzing Latin Cousins”: Afro-Latinxs, African Americans, and the Creation of a Black Transcultural Midtown Musical Scene, 1933–1966

Abstract After the Palladium Ballroom began hosting Afro-Cuban mambo groups in 1947, it became the foremost integrated dancehall to emerge in postwar New York City. This article examines Afro-Latinx and African American cultural mediators who helped forge a mixed-race midtown scene at the venue and at nearby jazz clubs. As Gotham became increasingly segregated, musicians and dancers refused to be confined to uptown neighborhoods. By forging an integrated midtown scene and making transcultural Afro-Cuban jazz music, they sought to rethink and remap the spatial contours of a divided city. While scholars of urban history have produced a narrative that moves ever more starkly towards segregated environments, I maintain that mediators disrupted—but did not destroy—patterns of segregation in New York. They did so by creating songs and venues premised on racial interaction rather than isolation. Non-white artists changed the rhythm of the city just as they syncopated their music with off-beat cadences. What follows is an exploration of how Afro-Cuban musicians fought to perform for mixed audiences. Artists like Mario Bauzá solicited help from African American jazzmen like Dizzy Gillespie who helped popularize cross-cultural Afro-Cuban jazz and put the Palladium on the map. At the midtown ballroom, African American choreographers like Katherine Dunham facilitated interracial dance and educated guests about Black Atlantic cultural traditions. These mediators helped to carve out new musical spaces that could not have existed at uptown venues. They transformed midtown clubs into sites that honored Black diasporic traditions and embraced cross-cultural innovation.