Machito

Machito, born Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo in Havana, Cuba, was a singer and maraca player who became one of the central figures in Afro-Cuban jazz. He moved to New York City in the late 1930s and formed the Afro-Cubans in 1940, a band that, with musical director Mario Bauzá, wove together Cuban rhythms and big band jazz arrangements into a sound that fed directly into the development of Cubop and salsa. He recorded prolifically from the 1940s through the 1980s, often featuring his foster sister Graciela as vocalist.