The story goes that in the early 60's Eddie Palmieri and his bandmates heard Pello's mozambique from Cuba via shortwave radio. In every account I've heard or read, Palmieri and Manny Oquendo (Palmieri's timbalero during that time) have been vague as to how well they understood Pello's rhythm.
One thing is certain - while both are derived from conga de comparsa, the Cuban and NYC versions are two separate rhythms, which do not share even a single part in common. A few years ago there was a thread in the Yahoo Latinjazz forum where Bobby Sanabria addressed some of the differences between the two rhythms:
>>As far as the Mozambique thread is concerned, I haven't caught up to all the postings but one must also look at the musical content (melody, harmony, besides rhythmic structure) that make it slightly different than the traditional Conga De Comparsa complex. Mozambique's have a lot do with Mambo/Guaracha style writing and for the most part, in Pello's case, are in major tonalities. Also his unique use of trombones is something that has to be considered. What Pello did, is, obviously based on the Conga De Comparsa, but it does have its own idiosyncratic differences to be considered a different style unto itself.
The Mozambique's done by Eddie Palmieri are almost always in minor keys. As far as the rhythmic differences between what Manny Oquendo and Tommy Lopez developed in La Perfecta after listening to the recordings of Pello? Well there was no way they could
reproduce exactly what Pello was doing with his battery of multiple percussion. Manny and Tommy were just two guys with the occasional added bell part that vocalist Ismael Quintana would provide on the gigs trying to reproduce what up to eight percussionists (sometimes many more) were doing with Pello. In other words, necesity is the mother of "invento".
Amongst knowledgable players the two styles (Pello's and Manny's/Tommy's/Eddie's) are usually referred to as "Pello's" or "El Original" and the other "El Estillo Nueva Yor'" or "Como se toca en Nueva Yor'".<<
In 1987, writing in Modern Drummer Magazine, John Santos wrote a short article on mozambique where he said:
>>Shortly after mozambique debuted in Cuba, a modified version of it began to appear in New York with the Conjunto La Perfecta of Eddie Palmieri, this being the first established New York band to interpret it. We say it is a modified mozambique because it was adapted to the smaller rhythm section of the dance hall band, which consisted of one conga drummer (usually with two drums), one timbale player(with one or more bells attached to the timbales), and a guiro player. With Julito Collazo on timbales, Tommy Lopez on congas, and Ismael Quintana (who also sang) on guiro, La Perfecta "smoked" and eventually carved a niche for themselves in the super-competitive arena of New York City. The great Manny Oquendo spent several years with La Perfecta and is identified by most people as being the timbalero with the band during its early stages, although master drummer Julito Collazo actually preceded Manny in the band.<<
I disagree with John that NY mozambique is a "modified version" of the Cuban rhythm and with Bobby's suggestion that the NY rhythm is a pared-down version of the Cuban rhythm. Pello el Afrokan later pared-down his ensemble to a typical dance band and he maintained the rhythm's essential parts and flavor. It still sounded quite different from the NY (Palmieri) mozambique. The title of Palmieri's ground-breaking record was "Mambo con Conga is Mozambique" and that's exactly what the NY mozambique sounds like: mambo + conga de comparsas. I think it's more accurate to say that the NY mozambique was inspired by Pello's rhythm.
In 1985 Kim Atkinson, Rob Holland, Bret Gollin, Michael Pluznick and the late Jerry Shilgi went to Cuba. While in Havana, they got a lesson from Pello and learned the Cuban mozambique. Michael Pluznick recorded Pello's rhythm on his CD "Rhythm Harvest" and Kim has been teaching the rhythm for over twenty years now. His batucada groups have performed hip arrangements of the Cuban mozambique. Check out Kim's CD "Carnaval Spirit", where you can hear what I'm talking about (
http://www.pulsewave.com). I played on Kim's two mozambique instructional videos, but regret my less than stellar performance, - oh well.
While the NY mozambique always has that distinctive timbale bell part, there is no set conga part. Congueros generally play something that follows the bell pattern. The Cuban mozambique on the other hand, has set parts. Not only that, but the parts have set places in clave where they enter, like you find in iyesa and other folkloric rhythms. For example, the congas and clave enter on the three-side and the bell enters on the two-side. This is different than how you ordinarily enter in a salsa tune. In band music you usually enter 3-2 if it's a 3-2 song, or 2-3 if it's a 2-3 song.
-David