mambon.

1939 H. Courlander Haiti Singing ii. 20 Madame Toussaint is a rich mambo, and there are other rich mambos and houngans.

1952 H. B. Cave Haiti xvi. 175 I met not only a mambo (priestess) but a houngan (priest) as well.

1964 W. G. Raffé Dict. Dance 299/1 Mambo (Haiti), ritual dance of Voodoo; an initiation ceremonial which follows the ancient Danse Shalame (Salome) in its symbolic-realism. ‘Mambo’ is the official name for the chief priestess.

1966 Daily Tel. 11 Aug. 18/6 The author and his herbalist friend became close companions with a girl who was often thus possessed, but had to be initiated and trained by an expert sorceress or mambo.

1985 National Geographic Mar. 395/2 True, there are some voodoo priests and priestesses—ouagau and mambos—who ‘serve with both hands’, or practice sorcery as well as voodoo.

1991 Drew Mag. Nov. 21/2 As a manbo, Mama Lola holds birthday parties for the different Iwa on or around the corresponding saint's day found on the Catholic calendar. At those parties the spirits ‘ride’ Mama Lola, speaking through her to those gathered in her Brooklyn home.

1946 Billboard 28 Sept. 32/3 Equally attractive is the Morales piano and the band's rumba rhythms for ‘Mambo’.

1948 San Francisco Call-Bull. 17 Sept. 11/1 Tony De Marco predicts the new dance fad will be ‘The Mambo’, which was introduced..last week. A zingier form of rhumba.

1950 N. Cassady Let. 15 Oct. (2005) 168 I got lots of Mexican Indian Mambo from gone old Mexican, Watsonville, Calif. (record girls tell me [they] have nothing but real Mexican Mambo).

1951 R. Chandler Let. 19 Apr. in R. Chandler Speaking (1966) 213 I doubt if he knows the new dance called a mambo, because it seems to be only recently discovered or developed.

1951 J. Kerouac On the Road: Orig. Scroll (2007) 194 Mambo blasted from jukeboxes.

1952 Down Beat 25 Jan. 2/2 Prado, who says he introduced the mambo in Mexico City in 1948, claims it is merely Afrocuban rhythm with a dash of American swing.

1955 Caribbean Q. 4 ii. 102 Some St. Lucians..patronize the several clubs which have jukeboxes stocked largely with mambos of the Perez Prado school.

1966 Crescendo Dec. 27/1 Only bossa novas and mambos seem to be played with anything like enthusiasm by these bands.

1972 Village Voice (N.Y.) 1 June 4/3 Now the pop-music business, having scraped the hillbilly barrel and blown the froth off the mambo craze, has taken over R[hythm]-and-B[lues].

1974 L. Ellfeldt This is Ballroom Dance x. 86 Some of these orchestras tried combining the American jazz beat with the Cuban rumba rhythm. The result was a new rhythm called the mambo, a term freely borrowed from African voodoo religion.

1985 E. Leonard Glitz vi. 55 A group..was playing salsa, calypso, mambo.