Jorge Fernando

Latin jazz is a fusion of jazz harmony and improvisation with Afro–Latin American rhythms, song forms, and percussion. It combines the swing, bebop, and big-band traditions with clave-based grooves such as son, rumba, danzón, and mambo, and later integrates Brazilian feels like samba and bossa nova. Typical features include the use of the clave (2–3 or 3–2), piano montunos (guajeos), bass tumbao patterns, timbales cáscara, conga marcha, and call-and-response horn "mambo" figures. While the rhythm section locks into cyclical patterns, soloists improvise using the vocabulary of jazz, creating music that is both danceable and harmonically rich.

Punto (also called punto guajiro or punto cubano) is a rural, sung genre from Cuba’s western and central regions that fuses Iberian poetic song with Cuban string-accompanied dance music. At its core is the improvised or composed décima espinela (a ten‑line stanza of octosyllabic verse) delivered by a solo singer (or two in friendly duels), accompanied by bright, ringing plucked strings such as the Cuban laúd, guitar, tres, and sometimes bandurria or tiple. Growing out of Andalusian and Canary Islands song practices brought by settlers, punto became a Cuban campesino (peasant) art that later integrated Afro‑Cuban rhythmic sensibilities and performance energy. It is heard at guateques (rural gatherings), in “controversia” poet‑duels, and in stage or radio formats. Melodically strophic and often in major mode, it balances Iberian lyricism with Cuban swing, using light percussion (güiro, handclaps, foot‑stomping) and propulsive strumming or arpeggiated guajeos to support ornate, witty verse.