Back in 1966, while England were winning the World Cup at Wembley, the boogaloo came out of every window in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

A hybrid fusing black R&B and soul with Afro-Cuban mambo, son and cha-cha-cha, the boogaloo’s prime exponent was Joe Cuba (*not his real name) and its biggest hit was Bang Bang, which sold more than a million copies.

Beneath this YouTube clip an old Italian dude reminisces fondly about those hot summer nights with no air conditioning, just a small window fan and the smell of garbage wafting up from the street, with block parties where the entire neighbourhood – Italians, blacks, Irish, Polish and Puerto Ricans – all had a great time.

“We mostly all got along. Yes, there were gangs and fights but the most of the hard working people and the families got along. You know why? We were all poor. It’s always been more about the color green of the dollar than skin color.”
Joe Cuba’s real name was Gilberto Cardona and his parents had come to New York from Puerto Rico, settling among the uptown Latino community of Spanish Harlem.

Cuba began playing the conga after breaking a leg playing the neighbourhood sport, stickball, and joined a band when he left school. After seeing a concert by Tito Puente he introduced himself, forming a lifelong friendship that encouraged him to form his own band in the mid-1950s.

Using a mixture of Spanish and English in the lyrics, the Joe Cuba Sextet became part of the embryonic Nuyorican movement. They had their first hit with El Pito, apropriating the “I’ll Never Go Back To Georgia” chant from Dizzy Gillespie’s Afro-Cuban tune Manteca.

Bang Bang kicked off the boogaloo craze.

Another fan recalls its impact at the time: “As a teenager growing up in NYC, I can remember walking my white ass through Spanish Harlem in the mid-1960s on the way to Randall’s Island.

“If this song wasn’t streaming out of the open windows and crowded basements, it was rising up from the very streets smoky with sweat, tobacco and exotic spices of the Caribbean. Everything was alive, everybody was on the streets, all life was poor but happening.”