Playlist Central

Without Cachao, salsa as we know it would not exist. The Cuban-born musician and his brother invented the mambo rhythm in 1937, and it quickly became a global craze. His 1957 descarga recordings helped set the stage for salsa, forging an unlikely but potent marriage between jazz and Afro-Cuban sacred music -- all, of course, embedded in mambo. Actor Andy Garcia revived Cachao's career in the 1990s, producing a series of Grammy-winning recordings. Cachao died March 22; he was 89.