Israel "Cachao" López (September 14, 1918 – March 22, 2008), often known just as "Cachao" (pronounced kah-CHOW) was a Cuban mambo musician, bassist and composer, who has helped bring mambo music to popularity in the United States of America in the early 1950s. He was born in Havana, Cuba. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, won several Grammy Awards, and has been described as "the inventor of the mambo". He is considered a master of descarga (Latin jam sessions).
He was, in his last years, the most important living figure in Cuban music, on or off the island. And according to Cuban-music historian Ned Sublette he was "arguably the most important bassist in twentieth-century popular music", innovating not only Cuban music but also influencing the now familiar bass lines of American R&B, "which have become such a part of the environment that we don't even think where they came from".
