In the 1940s and 1950s, danzón and son gave rise to the mambo and the cha-cha-chá, the first Cuban dance crazes to travel the world. At the same time Havana saw the birth of casino, the couple dance timba is still danced to.
In 1938 cellist Orestes López wrote the danzón Mambo for Arcaño y sus Maravillas, with syncopated motifs from the son and improvised flute passages. Orestes and his brother Israel "Cachao" López started calling the final, improvised part of the danzón the mambo.
Pianist Dámaso Pérez Prado from Matanzas moved to Mexico in 1949 and built a bigger, jazzier sound there with four or five trumpets and saxophones. It became a dance craze in Mexico and the United States. In New York, where mambo was heard from 1947, the Palladium became the "temple of mambo", with Machito, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente.
The slower cha-cha-chá, also derived from the danzón, replaced mambo in the mid-1950s as the most popular dance in North America.
From the mid-1950s casino developed, named after the casinos deportivos. Dancers combined the son with figures from mambo, cha-cha-chá, rumba guaguancó and North American jive. Casino gave rise to the rueda de casino, the circle group dance with called figures. Since the 1970s casino has often been called "Cuban salsa".
Outside Cuba, mambo was absorbed into salsa by the 1970s. In Cuba itself, son grew into songo and timba, and casino remained the dance that goes with it. Read on under modern.