Pachanga

Pachanga is the Cuban dance music that swept New York ballrooms between 1959 and the mid-1960s: fast, bouncing dance numbers played mainly by charangas francesas, whose French flute and violin sections ride over timbales, güiro, conga and piano. The rhythm mixes danzón's charanga format with son montuno and merengue inflections, and the accompanying dance added a hopping, shuffling step. *Johnny Pacheco* and *Charlie Palmieri* and his Charanga *La Duboney* led the craze from the Palladium and the Caravana Club, and #Alegre Records# documented it before boogaloo and salsa absorbed its public.