What is Cha-cha-cha?

The cha-cha-cha (additionally called cha-cha) is a dance of Cuban beginning. It is danced to the
music of the identical name delivered via Cuban composer and violinist Enrique Jorrin within the early
Nineteen Fifties. This rhythm became advanced from the danzón-mambo. The call of the dance is an
onomatopoeia derived from the shuffling sound of the dancers' feet once they dance consecutive brief
steps (successfully, at the fourth count of every measure) that represent the dance.

In the early 1950s, Enrique Jorrín worked as a violinist and composer with the charanga
organization Orquesta América. The organization completed at dance halls in Havana wherein they
played danzón, danzonete, and danzon-mambo for dance-oriented crowds. Jorrín observed that among the
dancers at those gigs had problem with the syncopated rhythms of the danzón-mambo. To make his tune
extra attractive to dancers, Jorrín commenced composing songs in which the melody changed into marked
strongly on the primary downbeat and the rhythm become less syncopated. When Orquesta América
performed those new compositions on the Silver Star Club in Havana, it become noticed that the dancers
had improvised a triple step in their footwork producing the sound "cha-cha-cha". Thus, the new fashion
came to be called "cha-cha-chá" and became associated with a dance in which dancers perform a triple
step.

The primary footwork pattern of cha-cha-cha (one, two, three, cha-cha-one, two, 3) is also found
in numerous Afro-Cuban dances from the Santería faith. For example, one of the steps used inside the
dance practiced by way of the Orisha ethnicity's Ogun spiritual functions an identical pattern of footwork.
These Afro-Cuban dances predate the improvement of cha-cha-cha and have been acknowledged by
means of many Cubans in the Fifties, particularly the ones of African origin. Thus, the footwork of the
cha-cha-cha turned into probably inspired by way of these Afro-Cuban dances.

In 1953, Orquesta América launched two of Jorrin's compositions, "La Engañadora" and "Silver
Star", at the Cuban record label Panart. These have been the first cha-cha-cha compositions ever recorded.
They right away became hits in Havana, and different Cuban charanga orchestras quick imitated this new
style. Soon, there was a cha-cha-cha craze in Havana's dance halls, popularizing both the track and the
related dance. This craze quickly unfolds to Mexico City, and by way of 1955 the song and dance of the
cha-cha-cha had come to be popular in Latin America, america, and Western Europe, following inside the
footsteps of the mambo, which were a international craze a few years earlier.