Finally, some due

It’s taken three years for the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition on Latin jazz to get to L.A., leisurely winding through Washington, New York, Denver and even Kalamazoo, Mich., on its way West. Historically, that’s much the same route taken by this eclectic strain of music, cultivated by migrations of musicians in the U.S. melting pots of New York and New Orleans during the first half of the last century.

The arrival of the exhibition -- which opened Saturday for a three-month run at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park -- was greeted with exuberance by the music’s local fans and practitioners at a private reception the night before. Several said the show was a sign Latin jazz had finally arrived as a unique genre worthy of journalistic attention, academic study and artistic respect.

“This is fabulous!” exclaimed flutist and teacher Danilo Lozano as he surveyed the exhibition’s large-scale wall graphics and colorful kiosks in the shape of conga drums. “This is the first major exposition where you can say Latin jazz is here.”

“Latin Jazz: La Combinacion Perfecta” was conceived seven years ago as a bilingual, multimedia exhibition to trace the evolution of a musical style that has historically received much less attention than salsa, the popular dance genre with similar roots. It provides a valuable look at a vibrant slice of Latin music that started gaining more recognition during the ‘90s, with the creation of a special Grammy category, the proliferation of university classes and the regular inclusion of Latin acts in major jazz festivals.

The exhibition, along with a companion book and CD, focuses on this fusion of two distinct but equally complex elements, jazz melodies and harmonies from the U.S. and polyrhythms primarily from the Caribbean. But until recently, proponents say, the genre has long gone underappreciated.

“When you look at any book or serious study on jazz, if they mention Latin jazz at all, it’s maybe one paragraph at the most,” says Paul De Castro, head of Cal State L.A.’s Afro-Latin music masters program. “It’s been ignored for many years.”

The exhibition, organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services and America’s Jazz Heritage, also features stations for listening to music samples and a 20-minute documentary presented in an “activity room,” where viewers sit on Peruvian percussion boxes and play along with maracas and clave sticks. The website, www.smithsonianjazz.org/latinjazz, includes an excellent discography and glossary of terms as well as other information on the exhibition.

Among the few instruments on display are timbales signed by Tito Puente, congas signed by Poncho Sanchez and a five-key Cuban flute used by Rolando Lozano, Danilo’s father, on recordings by George Shearing and Cal Tjader, among others.

The L.A. tour stop at the African American museum is a testament to the cross-cultural nature of the music, a felicitous collaboration among Afro Caribbean, Euro American and African American musicians.

“You realize that blacks and Latinos are so closely connected through the African diaspora,” said Evelyn Carter, the museum’s curator of education. “We need to emphasize more of that connection and let people know that we have more in common than we have differences.”

Despite the music’s multicultural base, there has always been an undercurrent of social tension in the field. Cubans and Puerto Ricans, occasionally competitive Caribbean cousins, sometimes vie for credit and influence in both salsa and Latin jazz. And among Cubans, politics has pitted Miami-based musicians against their Havana-based counterparts.

“I tried to steer clear of any of that stuff,” says UC Irvine social sciences professor Raul Fernandez, exhibition curator and author of the companion text published by Chronicle Books. “The book is written and the exhibit is presented in a way that it could be shown in New York, L.A. and Havana without anybody getting offended.... This is a music that belongs to everybody.”

The exhibition has already encountered criticism, however, that it gives short shrift to other schools of Latin jazz, such as Brazilian bossa nova or Argentina’s jazz tango. “Latin jazz is so deep and so broad that, while this exhibit is stunning, it only scratches the surface of how much there is,” says L.A. broadcaster Alfredo Cruz, a consultant on the project. “Hopefully, people who don’t know about Latin jazz will get excited enough to investigate a little more.”

Fernandez says the focus of the exhibition was music developed within Latin communities of the United States while acknowledging that the music now encompasses a wide range of styles, including flamenco jazz from artists such as pianist Chano Dominguez. Some of those other styles and artists, including Argentina’s Gato Barbieri, are noted in graphic timelines along the gallery walls.

Yet, the exhibition makes it clear that the main wellspring of the music continues to be Cuba.

It highlights what some consider the official birth of Latin jazz in 1940 with the creation of Machito and his Afro-Cubans, the seminal band founded by Frank Grillo under the direction of Mario Bauza. “Tanga,” Machito’s 1943 signature tune, gets credit here as “the first true Latin jazz composition.”

The exhibition emphasizes the role of six influential Cuban percussionists -- Candido, Mongo Santamaria, Chano Pozo, Patato Valdes, Armando Peraza and Francisco Aguabella. It also credits Cuba’s new generation of musicians in a display devoted to Irakere, a powerhouse Havana band that almost single-handedly sparked a revival of the genre in recent years, yielding a host of gifted soloists such as founder and pianist Chucho Valdes, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera.

A black-and-white photo marks a dramatic milestone in the music’s history, the 1977 visit of U.S. musicians to Cuba. It shows Gillespie hugging Stan Getz on a Havana stage shared by young members of Irakere and Los Papines, a percussion group. That visit helped open the door to a new generation of Cuban musicians who flourished in the ‘90s, including pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba.

The exhibition has one major failing -- music samples are hard to hear through the small speakers provided. Headphones would have helped. It also would have been wise to show the video in a quiet room apart from the activity room, where the cacophony of amateur percussionists drowns out the sound.

The exhibition continues here until Oct. 9. It then moves on to New Orleans, completing its 12-city run with stops next year in Omaha and San Antonio.

“I really wanted to make sure that when it went to San Antonio, or New Orleans or L.A.,” Fernandez said, “people felt, ‘Oh, there’s part of me here. I belong here. And this belongs to me.’ ”