Rappin’, Writin’, and Breakin’

Word has it that Machito, the father of Latin jazz who died in early 1984 at 75, was learning how to breakdance. The great Cuban bandleader, who since the 1940s had performed with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and stood at the juncture of Caribbean and Afro-American musical traditions, must surely have recognized an exciting new stage in the dual heritage he had made his own. For break and rap rhythms, with all their absorption of intervening and adjoining styles, remain gro...