Published: 8 March 2019
Last updated: 5 March 2024
FROM CUBA TO THE CATSKILLS, the mid-20th century saw the rise of an improbable partnership between American Jews and the mambo. And with its popularity, a Yiddish-inspired term entered the lexicon to refer to its fans: Mamboniks.
A type of Afro-Cuban music as well as a form of dance, mambo had Jewish audiences moving their legs and shaking their hips to the rhythms of artists such as Tito Puente at the Palladium Ballroom in Manhattan, while honing their skills at Catskills resorts in the summer, a la “Dirty Dancing”). Some Jews even developed careers in the industry — dancers and DJs, nightclub owners and record company executives — as mambo became a national fad.
The story of this phenomenon is told in a new film, The Mamboniks, making its world premiere at the 36th Miami Film Festival on March 3.
Director Lex Gillespie, also a public radio journalist, says that before setting out to make the film five years ago, he “had no idea of the kind of connection between Jewish dancers and Latin music.”
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FULL STORY Hey mambo: The Latin music craze that moved a generation of Jewish immigrants (Times of Israel)
Photo: Mambo dancers in New York's Catskill mountains, from 'The Mamboniks.' (Courtesy Lex Gillespie)
