Victor Parra says “Salsa isn’t a musical form, it’s something that I put on my food to give it more flavor.” Host of WBEZ’s “Mambo Express,” this well-known Chicago native has dedicated his life to keeping alive the mambo sounds that swelled dance halls four and five decades ago.
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“Mambo came out of the danzon, this slow-paced Cuban music in the middle 30s,” Parra explains. “Danzon was a thing that kept repeating itself, a rhythm that stayed in one place. Then two brothers–Cachao and Orestes Lopez–came along and put some swing into it. They changed the bass line in the middle of songs, gave it more syncopation. When you got into the swing, that was called the mambo. Blackness came into the music with the conga drum.”
In the early 1960s, Parra devoted himself to collecting vintage Afro-Cuban records. A decade later, he opened a record shop at Damen and North, a couple storefronts from Cha Cha Cha, where the Mambo Express now performs. As his collection expanded so did his knowledge of the music. He hosted a weekly Afro-Cuban show on a community radio station and then, in 1981, went to WBEZ, where he turned mambo into a Saturday institution.
