Tito Puente is known internationally for his contributions to Latin music as a bandleader, composer, arranger and percussionist, and was also given the nickname "El Rey" or “King of Latin Jazz”. He was considered a great composer of Afro-Cuban jazz. Puente published more than 400 compositions, contributed to over 100 recorded albums, and won four Grammy awards in his career. Tito PuenteLatin Jazz is a style musical that blends Cuban and Caribbean rhythms and percussion instruments with jazz and its fusion of European sounds and African music. Latin jazz, also called Afro-Cuban jazz, was the culmination of the long interaction between the musical styles Americans and Cubans. A distinctive syncopated rhythm and the rhythm of the Cuban habanera were gifted to American jazz music in the early 20th century. In the following decades, Latin American melodies and dance rhythms permeated the United States, as American jazz made its way in the Caribbean and Central and South America. In the 1940s the swing era expanded their repertoire to include rumba and congas. The d...