The jazz appears in Cuba at the end of the XIX century, though it is not until the second decade of the last century that, with the creation of the first Jazz bands, it is recognized its real presence. Gradually those bands asserted over their American counterparts, which came to our country to master the language and the national jazz repertory.

According to researcher José Dos Santos, The music, as a result of reciprocal influences and creative talent, has had in jazz a singular expression of roots mixture, and of creation of a sonorous, particular and multiplying phenomenon to which Cuba has not been unaware of. Its own origin relates it with the Cuban music, its reach rhyme and colorful timbres extrapolated from the remote Africa, although the crucible in which it was created added up many other cultures, related with the peculiar conditions of slavery, fights and pseudo-emancipation that took place at the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX in the south of the United States.

In 1929 it was constituted in our country the first big band named Hermanos Castros leaded by saxophonist Manolo Castro, in which it was included sections for metal, sax and rimes.

In 1932, the prestigious Cuban musician Armando Romeu organizes the first jazz band he created that, unlike the others from that period, had musicians and arrangers such as Chico O´Farril, Pucho Escalante, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín Justiz, Kiki Hernández, Isidro Pérez, Gustavo Más, Rafael Tata Palau, Pedro Chao and Armando Romeu himself.

During the forties takes place in New York the fusion between the Jazz and the Afro-Cuban music. Since 1930, some Cuban musicians were settled in that American crowded city, as Miguelito Valdés and trumpeter Mario Bauzá.

When Bellamar orchestra was rescinded, its director Armando Romeu was hired by Tropicana Cabaret where he formed a great band of 4 trumpets, 3 trombones and 5 saxophones.

An important moment for the jazz in Cuba is the appearing of musician Luciano Chano Pozo, author of Blen, Blen and Parampampín rumbas.

It is also valid to highlight that during the forties appeared the Feeling, musical movement that abandoned the traditional Spanish and Italian influences to get closer to jazz, among its composers it can be mentioned José Antonio Méndez and César Portillo de la Luz. Young authors joined later this first group and formed bands that played jazz, such as Frank Emilio Flynn and Bebo Valdés.

During the fifties, international jazz stars as Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra performed in Havana. At that time it was also recorded in Cuba the first LP of jazz. Later other recordings came with the participation of Marcelino Valdés and Arístides Soto (Tata Güines) among others.

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